ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: ITALIAN 1082

Dennis Looney CL 202 T TH 2:30 - 3:45

Office hours: T 12-2; TH 12-2; W 3-6; and by appointment—in fact, it is best if you schedule an appt in advance via phone (4-6264) or e-mail ().

This course examines the salient features of Renaissance Humanism from the vantage point of Italian literature between, approximately, 1350 and 1550. The course proceeds on the assumption that Italian Renaissance Humanism was the single most powerful force behind many of the cultural changes that occurred in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe. Humanism, a pedagogical program based on the study and recuperation of classical antiquity, had a direct impact on the development of schools and universities across early modern Europe, and in many ways it leads us to the study of the humanities in the contemporary American university.

TEXTS

Burke, P. The Renaissance. Humanities Press 1990.

Corbett, E. + R. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford UPress1998.

Italian Renaissance Reader. Eds. J.C. Bondanella + M. Musa. Meridian Press 1987. (IRR)

Poliziano, Angelo. Le Stanze. U Mass Press 1979.

Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Ed. E. Cassirer. U of Chicago Press 1986.(RPM)

Woodward, W.H. Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist Educators: An Introduction to

the History of Classical Education. Rpt. U of Toronto Press 1996. (VDF)

Various photocopies to purchase throughout the semester.

SCHEMATIC SYLLABUS (to be supplemented with bi-weekly mini-syllabuses)

Weeks 1-2 INTRODUCTION: the problem of the Renaissance; tradition and the classics; definitions; chronology; humanism; imitatio; studia humanitatis; rhetoric and oratory; method; experience vs. authority. (readings from TR, VDF, and IRR)

Weeks 3-4PETRARCA: Petrarch’s attack against Scholastic philosophy; the Petrarchan manner in lyric poetry; P's recourse to the original models of classical eloquence; the master of Christian humanism; readings from Petrarch’s Canzoniere; Letters; Coronation Oration; On his own ignorance and that of many others; and Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. (IRR, RPM, photocopies)

First oral assignment. Working with a partner, compose an invective of 2-3 minutes modeled on the typical humanist diatribe, e.g., Petrarch’s On his own ignorance. Choose one of you to deliver before class in week 4. Self-assessment exercise and classmate’s critiques will help me evaluate the speech. Class will critique speech following guidelines drawn from Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.

Weeks 5-6BOCCACCIO: the rise of narrative fiction in the vernacular; the medieval distrust of mundane fiction; B's self-defense in the Decameron and in the Genealogie; B's defense of Dante. (IRR and photocopies)

Weeks 7-9 BRUNI: civic humanism in Florence at the beginning of the Quattrocento; deepened understanding of Roman history; new appreciation of classical oratory; the growing importance of Greek culture for the Italians; Bruni’s Laudatio Urbis Florentinae and Dialogue to Pier Paolo Vergerio; Vergerio’s Concerning Liberal Studies; Bruni’s Concerning the Study of Literature. (photocopy and VDF)

Second oral assignment: Using Bruni’s Praise of the City of Florence as your model, prepare a speech in praise of a country, city, neighborhood, or some other specific place that you know well. Your speech should be 4-5 minutes. It should follow the sequence of parts discussed in Bruni’s work: introduction, narration, proof, and conclusion. Deliver before class in week 9. Class will critique speech following guidelines drawn from Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.

Week 10ALBERTI and LEONARDO: humanism in the vernacular; architecture; science; the practical application of classical learning; idiosyncratic humanists. (IRR)

PAPER due end of week 10.

Week 11PICO and FICINO: Neoplatonism in Florence at the end of the Quattrocento; the rise and fall of Savanorola’s theocratic regime; Ficino’s Concerning the Mind; Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (RPM and photocopies)

Week 12POLIZIANO and LORENZO DEI MEDICI: the new philology; the
dismemberment of the classical past; imitatio, contaminatio, intertextuality. Poliziano’s Le Stanze; Lorenzo’s Ambra (photocopies)

Week 13MACHIAVELLI + GUICCIARDINI: the sense of history and the practice of historiography; the importance of method and the search for it; The Prince; excerpts from the Discourses and Guicciardini’s Ricordi. (IRR)

Week 14From Renaissance Humanism to the Humanities and beyond.

Third oral assignment: Compose a speech (5 minutes) in which you argue the degree to which the modern university curriculum in general, and your experience of it in particular, is linked to the curriculum of the studia humanitatis as developed by Renaissance humanists. To what extent can we claim that the education of university students in the USA is based on the pedagogical program of Renaissance Humanism? To what extent do the humanities broadly understood derive from and reflect the thinking and writing of the early modern period? Class will critique speech following guidelines drawn from Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.

The FINAL EXAM will be a take-home essay due at the end of exam week.

EVALUATION:

3 oral assignments10% each

1 paper due at midterm25%

final exam (take-home)25%

class participation20% (includes the weekly low-stakes writing

assignments)

A word on the course requirements.

1)Oral Assignments

You are asked to give three speeches that should reflect in various ways examples of oratory that we will be studying in class. You will not be allowed to give make-up speeches at some later date. Speeches are to be given without reading from a written text or reciting a whole written text from rote memory. I will give number grades to each speech on reviewing your self-critique and your classmates’ critique of the speech, as follows:

  • 1 means a speech whose faults outweighed its virtues.
  • 2 means a speech whose faults and virtues were balanced.
  • 3 means a speech whose virtues outweighed its faults.
  • 4 (extremely rare) means a breakthrough into memorable eloquence.

I will then move from these number grades to a collective letter grade, which will also factor in reward for improvement, or penalty for decline, over the arc of the semester.

2) Self-critiques

Each student speech will be videotaped. Your sets of self-critiques (due first class after each speech) are to be based on your reviewing your speeches on video, and when you hand in each self-critique you should also lend me your video so that I can review them too. Your self-critiques should be at least two double-spaced pages, and written with the same kind of care to organization and format as you would give any other paper. I will take your self-critique into consideration when I formulate my own response to your speech. Before the first is due we will discuss in more detail what I will be looking for in the self-critiques.

3)Writing Exercises

10 of the Thursday classes will begin promptly with a 15-minute writing exercise based on that day’s reading. It will be open book, hence you will handicap yourself if you forget to bring the book to class, and it is understood that a commitment to the course is a commitment to purchasing the books for it. It will not be a quiz, with factual questions having correct or incorrect answers. Rather, it will be an exploratory philosophical question which only a careful reading of the text will have enabled you to address intelligently. As such, it will be keyed to directions the subsequent discussion might well lead into. It will be graded 3, 2, 1 or 0:

  • 0 means you show you did not do the reading, or were absent.
  • 1 means you made a minimal but unsatisfactory answer to the question.
  • 2 means you made a competent answer to the question demonstrating clearly that you have read the text with care.
  • 3 means you made an exceptional insightful and well written answer.

Your average on the writing exercises will factor into the participation grade and will also be used to inflect your average grade for your three speeches. If your cumulative writing exercise average is near 3, that will notch your speech-average grade up; if near 1, that will notch it down; if around 2, your speech grade will be maintained.

4)Class Participation

Class participation grading will be based on:

  • coming to class and arriving on time
  • writing exercises
  • written self-critiques of your 3 speeches
  • participating in class in a way that shows you have done the readings thoughtfully
  • speaking up and speaking well in class

5) Paper and Exam

  • More info on these items in due course.