Mediterranean Decameron

The Decameron, Florence’s “mercantile epic”, embraces a wide cosmopolitanism through stories of trade, travel, politics, and piracy within the pan-Mediterranean network, extending from Marseilles to Alexandria of Egypt. While certainly a theater of political and cultural conflict, the Mediterranean also emerges as a mobile and hybrid space of positive exchange, including wit, humor, sex, love, knowledge, religion, and wisdom. Through discussion and research, in this course we will focus on how and why ideas and beliefs of the Eastern Mediterranean are represented, and whether travel across the Mediterranean transforms protagonists and communities, proposing new values and prospects for the Italian and Western European audience. (ITAL0355 or equivalent) 3 hrs. sem.