A survey of several different genres of writing that explores some key features of each and encourages students to develop a range of strategies of reading, interpretation and analysis. Short texts will be drawn from different periods of Italian cultural production, and students will work comparatively to understand and evaluate the structural features which characterise them as well as the ideologies by which they are informed. In particular, the module introduces literary and cultural criticism, and outlines the ways in which this may be understood and productively applied to primary texts.