The Italian Renaissance and the Path to Modernity

Are humans free and self-determining agents possessed of infinite potential or limited beings subject to the vagaries of fortune? What is the relationship between love and beauty? Is it better for a leader to inspire love or fear? These are the kind of questions Renaissance thinkers asked and we will pursue in our study of the literature, art, and history of Italy from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In this course, you will become acquainted with major writers, thinkers, and artists, and key ideas, innovations, and movements. Examining masterpieces of literature (poetry and prose), art (painting, drawing and sculpture), theater and music, including works of the High Renaissance, we will explore such topics as love, power, faith, reason, and contingency in human affairs. With the themes of discovery, invention and adaption as our guide, we will reflect on perennial tensions between imitation and inspiration, tradition and innovation, and conformity and transgression in Renaissance and early modern Italy. Taught in Italian. Recommended: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent (2 years of Italian). This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.