PETRARCH’S ITINERARIES (Professor Dennis Costa—Italian & Comparative Literature, Boston University)
At the heart of Francesco Petrarca’s poetry and prose are ‘itineraries,’ journeys that are both real and imagined. This course allows students to trace the movements, detours and circlings that this greatest of Italy’s lyric poets fashioned into literary texts, particularly in his erotic poetry (the Rime Sparse) and in his letters. We shall take note of Petrarca’s preoccupation with the dimension of time, and outline those elements in his works that gave rise to a new, ‘humanist’ point of view for Western culture. The course includes visits to all the sites in Padova associated with the poet’s long residency in the city, as well as trips to Venezia and to Petrarca’s final home in Arqua’, in the Euganean Hills.
This course will be useful for students of literature (both Italian and late Latin) and of Renaissance thought and history.
Lectures and discussions in Italian. Most course-materials will be made available in Padova, in bi-lingual format and photocopied.
The one text-book for the course is: Francesco Petrarca, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: the Rime Sparse and other lyrics, translated (with facing Italian text) by R. Durling. Harvard University Press (paper), 2005. This book is available from amazon.com . Students taking the course should purchase it in the U.S. and bring it with them to Padova.
We shall have an exam at mid-course and a final exam; students will present in-class analyses of the love-poems and an 8-10 pp final paper.
Texts (all works by Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374):
Letter to Posterity Letter to Titus Livy
Rime Sparse (the love poems), part I
Letter, on his private concerns Letter, on Time’s flying Secretum (excerpts)
Rime Sparse (the love poems), part II
Letter, on crossing the Alps Letter, on moving frequently the Triumph of Time (excerpts) the 10th Bucolics: “the Laurel Tree Dying” or “Laura Westering”
We look as well at examples of earlier erotic poetry by G. Guinizelli and by Dante.