Latin American Literature 3

The course is entitled "Dante's Hell in the Hispanic American Literature of Migration" and is divided into the following three topics, which will be addressed in sequence:
A: Representing the hell of migration: from the Northern Front to the Mediterranean. Oral, written and visual narratives. B: Travelling to hell: the novels by Alejandro Hernández (Mexico) and Eduardo González Viaña (Peru):
C: Semiotic methods of textual analysis. Theory and practice.
The course aims to place itself in the context of the celebrations for the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante's death, which will constitute a scenario of absolute cultural and global importance. Latin American literature has always cultivated a specific predilection for Dante, which in contemporary times has undergone a further renewal. Dante as an exile and migrant, together with the pages of the Commedia sulla sofferenza umana, have acquired the rank of poet and exemplary text to represent the tragedy of contemporary migrations in the western hemisphere, from the Northern Front between Mexico and the United States to the Mediterranean. First of all (part A), we will develop the profile of a contemporary and Latin American Dante, which is used as a symbolic resource to represent the hell of dictatorship and migrations. The works that will be taken into consideration use above all the images of the first canto of the Comedy to weave a rich palimpsest of quotations and narrate the world of shadows without refreshment, of invisibles in eternal pain, which are today the migrants and, before them, the desaparecidos of the Argentinean dictatorship. The corpus of authors that will be built, also through the collaboration of students, will include both writers and artists.
In the second instance (part B) we will focus on two works of particular importance, such as those of the Mexican Alejandro Hernández, Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas, and the Peruvian Eduardo González Viaña, El corrido di Dante, built on the peculiar and precise reference to Dante's hell to represent the migratory journey.
After having acquired and elaborated the necessary knowledge on the subject in the first two parts of the course, in the last (part C) we will dedicate ourselves to the textual analysis of the works considered. In order to complete the preparation already started in previous years, we will deepen the tools provided by the semiological analysis. This is in order both to make the students autonomous in the exercise of understanding and interpreting the texts and to initiate them in the drafting of the final work.
The course programme is valid until September 2022 inclusive.