Inventing Italian Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca

This course is both an introduction to medieval Italian literature and culture and a continuation of the study of the Italian language. In the literary sphere the course will focus primarily on the Italian lyric tradition of the Sicilian school, the Dolce Stil Novo, and Dante's early lyric poetry. From there we will read and discuss Petrarch's Canzoniere and autobiographical letters. The third part of the course will regard the short story, or novella, in Boccaccio's Decameron and its antecedent, Il Novellino. The literary genres to be explored in this course are short-form poetry and prose (sonnets, madrigals, sestinas, canzoni, and the novella). Linguistically, the course will focus on the language of literary and cultural criticism - expressing and defending opinions at an advanced level, and discussing the themes of the course fluently. The expectation is that levels of reading, writing, and speaking will improve by the end of the quarter. All class discussion, reading, and writing will be in Italian.