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Boccaccio's Decameron and the Italian Novella

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Boccaccio's Decameron and the Italian Novella Department of European Languages and Literatures EURO 120 WRITING ABOUT EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE Boccaccio's Decameron and the Italian Novella Prof. Karina F. Attar [email protected] class time: office hrs: classroom: office: King Hall 205B Prerequisite: English 110 – College Writing 1 Course description: This course fulfills the Pathways College Writing 2 requirement. EURO 120 builds on the basic college writing skills of English 110 by helping students to practice the craft, rhetoric, and process of critical thinking and writing effectively in the discipline of European Literature and Culture. In each permutation of this variable topics course students read, discuss, and write about authentic French, German, Italian, Modern Greek, and/or Russian literary and cultural materials. Students develop analytical and writing skills by performing close readings of primary texts, contextualizing their interpretations through discussions of secondary texts, and developing their own original theses on European literary and cultural productions. Individual writing assignments (at least 20 pages in total over the semester) vary in length and range from informal/ungraded to formal/graded. Students are expected to revise drafts of formal/graded assignments multiple times and to participate in in-class writing workshops and peer-reviews. Course topic: This iteration of EURO 120 introduces students to the Italian novella tradition, with a particular focus on Boccaccio's Decameron, the fundamental text of early European vernacular prose storytelling. Our discussion of this primary text is supplemented by readings of recent scholarly essays on the Italian novella and the art of storytelling, as well as readings of variants of the “Romeo and Juliet” story later dramatized by Shakespeare. Some of the literary and sociocultural themes we will address include the organization and purpose of the frame-story model; the treatment of sexual, social, religious, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity; the tension between “high” and “low” culture; and the development of mercantilism and literacy in 14th-century Italy. Course goals: This course helps students develop skills in the following areas, considered essential to the discipline of literary and cultural analysis: • identify and analyze key elements of the genre at hand through discussion of primary texts. • develop an understanding of literary/cultural materials as works emerging from specific cultural and historical contexts different from our own and that demand to be explored, puzzled over, and argued with together. • identify and evaluate the principal norms of writing in the humanities (including thesis, motive, evidence, analysis, and style; cf. Gordon Harvey handout) through analysis of secondary readings. • improve working knowledge of the grammar and mechanics of standard English. • practice the process of re-drafting and revising writing assignments through peer-review, in- class workshops, and instructor's feedback. • distinguish and develop content and style appropriate for writing in different genres and addressed to different audiences, ranging from short/informal/ungraded reading responses to longer/formal/graded research papers. • recognize, refine, and take ownership of the language and rhetorical strategies they employ. • develop critical thinking on the relevance and usefulness of secondary sources for the interpretation of primary texts. • learn/develop research skills by gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing secondary sources and building a bibliography. • learn to clearly and cogently formulate a thesis and accurately and pertinently support it through relevant textual evidence and well-reasoned arguments. Required Texts: Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Edited and translated by G. H. McWilliam. Second edition. London: Penguin, 2003 (QC bookstore) Additional primary and secondary readings (coursepack) Recommended Texts: Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New York: WW Norton, 2006 Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers. A Writer's Reference. Seventh Edition. Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2010 MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (available at the QC library and during office hours) Assignments and Grade Distribution: Attendance and participation 30% In-class presentation 10% Reading responses 30% Final research paper (3 drafts) 30% Attendance and participation: Daily attendance, punctuality, and participation are indispensable for us to build productive discussions in which we all learn from each other. Students routinely more than 5 minutes late to class are considered late. Three late arrivals equal one absence. More than two unexcused absences adversely affect your attendance & participation grade. If you must miss a class, please inform me in advance via email. You are responsible for any work missed when absent. In-class presentation: One brief in-class oral presentation on one Decameron novella of your choice. Assume your classmates have read the story and refrain from narrating the plot unnecessarily. Your presentation should present your own perspective on the story, and pay close attention to its placement and its elaboration of the themes Boccaccio also develops elsewhere in the collection. You will write-up your presentation (2 pages) for peer-review the following week. Reading reponses: You will write five 2-page reading responses. Three of these focus on the Decameron as a literary text and sociocultural document, and two focus on secondary readings. You need not argue a thesis in any formal sense in the way you will in the research paper, but you do have to give reasons for your opinions. We will discuss the mechanics and themes of these reading responses before they are due, and we will practice various forms of writing through informal/ungraded writing activities in class (see items marked C in the schedule below). Final Research Paper: You will write one 8-page research paper. We will workshop the paper in several stages: 1. selecting a topic; selecting primary and secondary sources; writing an outline. 2. formulating motive and a thesis statement; writing the first paragraph; furnishing relevant supporting evidence; structuring the essay. 3. formulating a title; revising thesis, evidence, structure; writing the conclusion; thinking about style. We will workshop each draft with the help of peer review as well as through an in-class workshop with a QC Writing Center Fellow. We will also spend one or two classes in the QC library to familiarize you further with the tools, resources, and methods of research. Keep past assignments handy to help you think about error correction and stylistics as you write the next assignment. Use MLA guidelines for citing sources and in your works cited list. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is available for consultation in the QC library and during office hours, as well as for purchase online (see http://www.mla.org/style). We will discuss these guidelines in class. The Writing Center @Kiely Hall 229 (tel: 718.997.5676, website http://qcpages.qc.edu/qcwsw) provides tutors specialized in helping writers at all stages of the writing process and from all disciplines. The Center offers individual, in-person tutoring appointments throughout the semester. I encourage you make an appointment to receive valuable feedback on how to improve your skills as a writer. See also the Writing Across the Curriculum site, at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/Writing. Policies: - Peer review and the library visit are required for this course. If you do not participate in the peer review and library visit, your essay grade for that draft will be dropped half a letter grade (barring exceptional and documented reasons for absence). - I only accept late responses/papers in exceptional circumstances. Unexcused late papers will be dropped half a letter grade a day until received, even if you do well on the assignment. - Plagiarism is a serious offense. It is stealing the words and ideas of someone else. By submitting someone else’s work as your own (whether purchased, copied, copy & pasted, or written by a relative or friend) or by failing to cite the source of ideas that are not your own, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarized papers are automatically graded F with no option for revision, and may lead to failure in the course and further disciplinary action by the college administration. If you need clarification about what plagiarism is, please speak to me before submitting your assignments. - I do not give extra credit assignments. - No cell phone or beeper use. Please turn everything off completely (no vibrate or silent). - No Food. Drinks are OK. Weekly reading/writing assignments (H) = hand in at the beginning of class (C) = in-class writing practice Week 1 Introductory lecture to the novella tradition Reading: Decameron, prologue Writing: working in pairs, write a reading response to the Decameron's prologue (C) Week 2 Reading: Decameron, Day I: Introduction Writing: identify Boccaccio's thesis, motive, evidence and style in the prologue and the introduction to Day I (C) Week 3 Reading: Decameron, I: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 In the library 1: accurate citation and bibliographical entries (C) Writing: 2 page reading response to Decameron I, 1, 2, and/or 3 (H) Week 4 Reading: Decameron II: 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 Reading: selections from Anatomy of the Novella by Clements and Gibaldi Writing: pre-draft exercise: identify in Decameron II a few of the generic features of the novella
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