ITAL 275 - Roots and Branches: Italian Renaissance Authors and Their Impact on Early Modern Western Culture

1 unit(s)

(Same as MRST 275) The works of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and Giovanni Boccaccio, arguably the greatest authors of Italian Humanism, had a lasting impact on early modern western culture, from the literary, to the philosophical, from the theatrical to the visual. In this course we explore the ways in which Petrarch’s poetic style (Canzoniere) and epistolary writing (Familiar and Seniles Letters) become a canon for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian and European poets (including William Shakespeare), and such essayists as Michel de Montaigne. Boccaccio’s invention of the novella genre and the writing of the Decameron inspired not only contemporary and Renaissance authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Marguerite of Navarre, but also theatrical production of the period (Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Shakespeare. Boccaccio’s erudite catalogue of famous women (De Mulieribus Claris) can be read as partial subtext to Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, and the iconography of Renaissance visual artists, like Botticelli and Titian, can be explored as based on Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s texts. Conducted in English. Eugenio Giusti.

Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. May be counted towards the Italian major.

Not offered in 2017/18.

Two 75-minute periods.