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IT345 Ideas and Images of the Italian Renaissance (Topic for Summer 2013): Humanism in Venice & Padua Prof

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IT345 Ideas and Images of the Italian Renaissance (Topic for Summer 2013): Humanism in Venice & Padua Prof IT345 Ideas and Images of the Italian Renaissance (Topic for Summer 2013): Humanism in Venice & Padua Prof. Dennis Costa Italian & Comparative Literature, Boston University This intensive summer course focuses on the special characteristics of the Renaissance in Venice and its territories and in Padua. While the course’s larger aim is to define the ‘humanist’ movement—a crucial moment, certainly, for the evolution of Western culture—it exemplifies humanism and its creative products by foregrounding Venetian cultural artifacts and literary texts, and also by juxtaposing these with some of their Florentine counterparts. The course- ‘textbook’ is a binder of photocopied primary and secondary materials, to be assigned on a weekly basis. There are weekly class-trips to important sites for the evidences of humanism in Venice and Padua. This course will be of central interest to majors and minors in Art History, History, Literature, Classics and Philosophy. (4 credits) Students will write a comprehensive exam at the beginning of Week V. Students will also prepare a research paper, to be delivered at the end of Week VI, as follows: In consultation with the instructor, each student chooses a Renaissance artifact: a public building or private house, a book, a musical composition, a sculpture or painting or iconographical program, a scientific tool . and write the results of their research on that artifact, including footnotes and bibliography. Final grades are based on: participation in class discussion and on class- trips (20%), written examination (40%) and the final paper (40%) Week I: When was the Renaissance? The relativity of historiographical terms; the ‘Middle’ Ages as ‘dark’; discovering a history of human artifacts; ‘perspective’ in history. Paduan pre-humanism: Pietro d’Abano and the origins of Paduan Aristotelianism at the Bo’ Marsilio da Padova and the possibility of a ‘world’ politics --READ: excerpts from the Defensor Pacis Lovato de’ Lovati and the recovery of classical manuscripts Albertino Mussato and neo-classical literature --READ: excerpts from Ecerinis and from his defense of poetry the PalazZo della Ragione and its iconographical program a Florentine painter in Padua: Giotto Class-trip to the Palazzo della Ragione, the Capella degli Scrovegni, the Tomb of ‘Antenor’ (Padua) Week II: What is Humanism? Francesco Petrarca --READ: Letter “on his private concerns”: a new piety; syncretism --READ: Treatise “on his own Ignorance”: a new paedogogy; anti- Aristotelianism --READ: Letter “to T. Livy”: the classics renewed --READ: Letter “to Posterity” Giovanni Boccaccio --READ excerpts from Geneology of the Gentile Gods Class-trip to Santa Giustina, the dietro-Duomo, the Sala de’ Giganti (Padua) Week III: the Rule of the Serenissima/ a Venetian Renaissance ‘Perspective’ on air and water?: painting in oil Giorgione, Mantegna, Stefano dell’ArZere, G. Bellini, TiZiano, Tintoretto Public/sacred spaces and public/sacred order PalazZo del Capitaniato e Orologio, Loggia della Gran Guardia, Donatello’s Santo, Prato della Valle (Padova) Biblioteca Marciana and piazZa S.Marco, church (and sacristy) and island of San Giorgio Maggiore, church of the Redentore (Palladio), Ponte di Rialto, l’Ospedale and campo SS. Zanipolo, the Scuola di San Rocco (Venezia) An un-Roman classicism Class-trips to the above sites in Padua and Venice. Week IV: New Literary Language / New Texts Theatre: the commedia dell’arte; Ruzante --READ: excerpt from Parlamento de Ruzante Lyric Poetry: Petrarca and neo-Petrarchism --READ: selected sonnets of Petrarch --READ: selected sonnets of Gaspara Stampa Prose: What is Italian? --READ: excerpts from Baldassare Castiglione, The Courtier --READ: excerpts from Pietro Bembo’s Prose della Volgar Lingua Greek Studies in Padua and Venice: B. Bessarion; D. Chalcondilas; the Aldine Press Class-trip to the Loggia and Odeo Cornaro (Padua) and to the Chiesa and Biblioteca de’ Greci (Venice) Week V: New Sciences and Freedom of Thought Dissecting and classifying nature a Florentine scientist in Padova: Galileo --READ: a report to the Venetian Senate on Galileo’s telescope Venetian legislation on the granting of university degrees in Padova --READ: Cassandra Fedele: a speech to the Venetian Senate on the education of women Venetian independence: the case of Paolo Sarpi Class-trip to the University of Padova: the Anatomical Theatre, the Botanical Garden WRITTEN EXAM Week VI: Humanist EloQuence In speech: READ: Ermolao Barbaro’s letter to Marco Dandolo On Eloquence In spatial forms: READ: excerpts from Daniele Barbaro’s Commentary on Vitruvius In silence and interiority: Paolo Giustiniani on humanist hermits In music: Claudio Monteverdi in Venice and Ferrara --HEAR: madrigal settings of Petrarch’s poems --HEAR: excerpts from the 1610 Vespers FINAL PAPER Celebratory class-trip to Petrarch’s house at Arqua’ in the Euganean Hills. READINGS will also be assigned from the following secondary sources (with more to come) Guido Billanovich, Preumanismo padovano Giuseppe Billanovich, I primi umanisti Dennis Costa, “de Legendo Deo,” in Irenic Apocalypse Deno Geanokoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice J.H. Randall, jr., “Scientific method in the School of Padua,” JHI Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients .
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