GRADUATE COURSES IN ITALIAN

FALL 2007

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

Italian 520
Medieval Autobiography
W 2-5
Prof. Brownlee

Italian 535
From Petrarch to Erasmus
Prof. Finotti
W 10-1

Poetry, epistolography, autobiography, history: redefining the status of all these genres, Petrarch marked out the foundations not only for a new textuality, but also a new anthropology, and reshaped the relation between literature, philosophy, religion, politics. The course will focus on the relations between the evolution of literary forms and the construction of personal and national identity in Europe from Petrarch’s foundation to Erasmus’ humanism. The class will be taught in English.

Italian 562
World Views in Collision
Prof. Kirkham
T 4-6

This course explores the impact of paradigm shifts on culture. Radical conflicts developed in 16th- and 17th-century Europe when Protestant reformers, scientific discoveries, and geographical explorations challenged a long-held Medieval worldview and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, which pursued its own reform at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). How did these historical upheavals influence changing styles in poetry and art from the high Renaissance to Mannerism and the Baroque? What kinship connects the twentieth century with this historical past? Readings will include: Machiavelli's comic play Mandragola, the vitriolic polemic involving Martin Luther, Thomas More, and King Henry VIII; Tommaso Campanella's Utopian dialogue The City of the Sun, selections from Galileo and The History of the Council of Trent by the Venetian Paolo Sarpi; poetry from Petrarch to Marino and Marinismo, parallel examples in the visual tradition from Leonardo to Bernini; and on the modern end, John Osborne's Luther, Bertholt Brecht's Galileo, and a classic Hollywood film Utopia, Frank Capra's Lost Horizon.