210.652 Curso Intensivo di Perfezionamento
This course is designed to help students attain very high levels in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Intensive use will be made of sight translation, written translation, paraphrasing, active reading, memory training and text analysis techniques. The course seeks to acquaint the students with a wider range of idiomatic expression and usages than they have previously managed, and to help them convey finer shades of meaning while consistently maintain grammatical control of complex language.
Zannirato 214.665 Letturatura Italiana III
This is a basic course presenting the Italian literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Forni 214.666 Seminar on Petrarch
The main focus of this graduate course is on Petrarch’s
lyric poems. Petrarch’s philosophical Latin works (especially
the Secretum) form the background for the discussion.
The “poetry of praise,” which is a main concern in
the course on early Italian poetry, is investigated in the
context of Petrarch’s works.
Forni 214.667 Poesie italiane del Novecento
A study of several poems by Novecento poets such as Gozzano,
Montale, Noventa, and Erba, will serve as an introduction
to the skill of writing about literary texts.
Forni 214.668 First Seminar on Boccaccio (Boccaccio I)
Readings from Boccaccio’s early works (Filocolo, Filostrato,
Teseida, Ninfale fiesolano) prepare the students
for the study of the Decameron (Boccaccio II). Particular
attention is given to the different cultural traditions that
enrich young Boccaccio’s imagination. The question of
the writer’s humanism is seen against the background of
his Neapolitan years.
Forni 214.669 Second Seminar on Boccaccio (Boccaccio II)
A reading of Boccaccio’s Decameron. A brief history of
the criticism on the work is followed by an extensive treatment
of matters of structure, style, and theory of narrative.
Also included is an assessment of the meaning of
the Decameron within the development of Italian literary
prose.
Forni 214.670 Scrivere di Letteratura
An introduction to scholarly writing in Italian and English.
Forni 214.671 I promessi sposi
A detailed analysis of Alessandro Manzoni’s novel within
its European context. This course aims at showing how
the religious and political components of Manzoni’s
imagination shaped this major work of Italian literature.
Forni 214.672 Tasso, The Epic, and Tradition
A reading of Tasso’s epics in relation to literary, religious,
and artistic tradition. Reading knowledge of Italian
required.
Stephens 214.673 The Literature of Humanism
Readings in the major texts of Latin and vernacular
humanism produced by Italians between 1300 and 1600.
History and validity of the concept of humanism, its varieties,
its major exponents, major 19th- and 20th-century
interpretations. Texts by Petrarch, Salutati, Valla, Pico,
Ficino, Machiavelli, Bruno, Campanella, and others.
Reading knowledge of Italian required.
Stephens 214.674 Literature and Witchcraft
The intersection of theology, philosophy, and social theory
in the stereotype of the witch and its influence on Italian
literature. Readings in witchcraft treatise and literary
texts of the period 1400-1700, medieval and early modern
theology and philosophy, and contemporary criticism and
theory. Reading knowledge of Italian required.
Stephens 214.675 The Invention of the Secular Theatre
The Italian Humanists of the Quattrocento rediscovered
lost and neglected texts of the Roman theater. More
crucially, they discovered the theater as a cultural institution,
and fully secularized it, making possible the classics
of modern theater from Shakespeare to Pirandello and
beyond. Survey of texts from early 1400s to late 1500s;
related discoveries and innovations in narrative literature,
stagecraft and stage machinery.
Stephens 214.677 Umberto Eco’s Postmodern Middle Ages
Since the 1960s Umberto Eco has been at the forefront
of European critical theory. Since 1980, he has been one
of the best-known European novelists. “The Name of the
Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum” have revitalized “theory-
rich” fiction in Europe and North America, inspiring
numerous imitators. Course will explore the relation of
Eco’s fiction to his most characteristic contributions to
literary and cultural theory.
Stephens 214.679 The Divine Comedy: An Intensive Reading in
English
A reading and discussion of Dante’s masterpiece, the
Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, in its entirety, in
English translation. Concentration on its structure and
relation to the most pressing theological, philosophical,
social, and political problems of Dante’s time. Its ongoing
relevance to our own concerns about ethics, government,
art, and mortality.
Stephens 214.680 Italian Comedy
Readings and discussion, in Italian, of the grand tradition
of comedy, satire, and humor in Italian literature: from
the humor of the Middle Ages through the rebirth of the
theater around 1500, to the modern classics of opera,
stage, and film. Class will be paced to build linguistic and
literary competence. Emphasis on reading, writing, speaking,
and recitation.
Stephens 214.683 Philology Becomes Philosophy: The Lamia of Angelo Poliziano (1454-94)
Angelo Poliziano (1454-94) represents the final phase of the Latinate intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism. During his intellectual generation humanists were poised, finally, to go beyond criticizing the style of late medieval scholastic philosophy, moving instead to its substance. Poliziano found himself in a position – teaching Aristotelian logic at the Florentine university and faced with the prospect of giving a praelectio, or opening oration, to the course he was to teach in the 1492 academic year – where he was able to launch one of the most scathing attacks on scholastic styles of thought. In his Lamia – the word denotes a vampiric kind of witch and for Poliziano connotes a reputation-mongering, back-biting rapacity – he sent up contemporary philosophy: anti-metaphysical, witty, and at times profound, this short treatise has only recently been critically edited and has never been translated into English. In this seminar, we will work through the treatise methodically, and in so doing open up a window onto one of the most intellectually exciting (and little studied) phases of Italian humanism.
Celenza 214.693 Platonism in the Italian Renaissance
This course will offer students a foundation for understanding the Platonic revival in fifteenth-century Italy. Transmission of sources, translation, cultural mediation, and pre-modern styles of philosophizing will all come under discussion. We will read a mixture of primary and secondary sources.
Celenza 214.721 Eighteenth Century Italian Autobiography
Notions of autobiography since Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a perspective onto
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century autobiographies (Vittorio Alfieri,
Carlo Goldoni, Giambattista Vico and selections from Giacomo Leopardi's
Zibaldone). Readings and discussion will be in Italian.
Zatti 214.749 The Scholar’s Bookshelf, Part I: Medieval
Authors’ Authors
Course will examine a variety of examples from the
genres and authors most read by medieval authors in the
Romance Languages canon, and relate them to authors
of that canon. Examples will include theology, philosophy,
encyclopedias, poetry, hagiography and historiography.
Translations will be used, but reading knowledge of
simple Latin is helpful.
Stephens 214.750 The Scholar’s Bookshelf, Part II
Stephens 214.760 Italian Humanism from Petrarch to Poliziano
What were Italian humanists doing when they decided to
write in a “new,” seemingly classicizing Latin? Concentrating
on five generations of humanists, from Petrarch to
Poliziano, and focusing on leading figures in each generation,
we will see that classicizing Latin prose served as a
unique means of pre-modern philosophical expression, a
form of “spiritual exercise” that energized and gave direction
to the Italian humanist movement. Yet, as classicizing
Latin became part of elite educations and as near-perfect
imitation of Ciceronian Latin grew increasingly common,
the tasks changed for leading scholars and intellectuals.
By the generation of Lorenzo Valla (+1457), important
thinkers moved beyond technical imitation; philology
began to challenge institutionalized philosophy on its
own ground and at the same time to give impetus to a
different kind of philosophy, deliberately anti-institutional,
resistant to orthodoxies, and highly attentive to
the complexities of language. After Poliziano, that same
anti-institutional energy was transferred into European
vernaculars, and an important phase of the Italian Renaissance
came to an end. Prerequisite: some basic reading
knowledge of Latin.
Celenza 214.764 Dante’s Infern A Reading for Teaching
This reading of the first cantica of Dante’s Commedia is
aimed at preparing future professionals in the humanities
for the teaching of Dante at the college level.
Forni 214.765 Castiglione e Della Casa
A reading of two major Renaissance books of conduct, the
Cortegiano & the Galateo.
Forni 214.768 Tasso’s Prose: The Dialogues
Torquato Tasso was not only a poet, dramatist, and literary critic, but also wrote over twenty philosophical dialogues. This course examines several of his major dialogues in terms of their compositional strategies, pertinence or consonance to his poetics, and contribution to Tasso's self-fashioning as Counter-Reformation public intellectual. Solid reading knowledge of Italian required.
Stephens 214.769 Poesia Italiana Delle Origini
This course is an introduction to the Scuola siciliana
and the Dolce stil nuovo.
Forni 214.771 Literature, Philosophy and Christianity: Gianfrancesco Pico Della Mirandola (1469-1533)
Reading and commentary of texts by a major author in the Renaissance philosophical canon. Gianfrancesco Pico was a key figure in the reintroduction of classical skepticism, but also a pietist, a theorist of witchcraft, and a persecutor of witches. We will read selected works on skepticism, imagination, Christianity, and witchcraft, both in their Latin originals and in sixteenth-century Italian translations. Gianfrancesco's intellectual inheritance from his uncle Giovanni Pico and other humanists will be examined, as will his influence on later writers in the philosophical and literary traditions, both Latin and vernacular. Reading knowledge of Latin and Italian required.
Stephens 214.772 Petrarch & Augustine
Amongst his favourite authors Petrarch mentions ever and ever again Augustine. Indeed, Petrarch’s works, not only the Secretum, but his lyric poetry as well, are imbued with vestiges of Augustine’s thinking. The use Petrarch makes of the church father’s main theological concepts, though, is highly provocative. - - The graduate course focuses on the relation between theological and literary discourse. Under this perspective, Petrarch’s writings can be considered as paradigmatic for a wide range of early modern literature, from Dante to Montaigne.
Küpper 214.780 Italian Short Fiction
Stephens
214.861 Italian Independent Study
Staff
214.862 Italian Dissertation Research
Staff
214.863 Italian Proposal Preparation
Staff
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