The Enchantment of Storytelling Teaching Persian Literature in Italy Today

Our contribution intends to briefly describe the history of teaching of Persian literature in Italian universities. Since the post- Second World War period, a number of outstanding personalities, even at international level (A. Bausani, G. Scarcia, R. Zipoli), have hold professorships in Persian literature. Not only have they spread the study of Persian literature among generations of students, but they have also trained new scholars who are now active in various fields. Each time, the new scholars (successors of those masters), following their own strands of research, have proposed to their students an ever-changing teaching of Persian literature. This teaching, today more than ever, requires us to respond to the cultural complexity of contemporary Iran. With regard to this necessity and within the historical framework outlined above, I will try to show the scientific and didactic principles that guide my work of teaching Persian literature in particular in two courses that I have been teaching for years, namely Narratives and cultural dynamics and Literary genres and translation. I will try to show how the teaching of language and the teaching of literature feed and fertilize each other and how the reading of the Classics and familiarity with contemporary literature provide privileged access to having real contact with Persian literary tradition.