Epoche della letteratura italiana II: introduzione al Medioevo e al Rinascimento

While continuing to develop critical and analytical skills through a careful reading of excerpts from the literary masterpieces of the Italian Middle Ages and the Renaissance, students will explore the artistic representations of one of the most enduring facets of human experience: love. Love in all its nuances, as spiritual ecstasy, volatile emotion, intellectual construction, erotic drive, insane passion, and comic interaction, has in fact dominated Italian literature and culture for centuries. Why has Italian culture produced such conflicting representations of love? How do Medieval and Renaissance texts still communicate with our deepest feelings and emotions, and, in particular, with our perception of love and sexuality? Through selective readings of Medieval prose and poetry by Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and of Renaissance works by Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Tasso, this course will address and discuss these questions. The analysis of visual culture (medieval and Renassance art; contemporary films based on the original literary texts) will complement the readings. (ITAL 0354 or equivalent) 3 hrs. lect./disc. 2 hrs. screen.