This course explores the rich innovations that marked Italian literature and the arts over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the Baroque culture of crisis and change to the Enlightenment's own reassessment of earlier forms of knowledge and representation. Topics include the poetics of the marvelous, the fascination with popular culture, the nuova scienza, social class and identity, the "cult of reason," and the relevance of both Baroque and Enlightenment categories to post-modernity. We will explore traditional genres such as lyric poetry, the essay, and the novella, but also new forms: the fairy tale, women's writing, travel literature, the commedia dell'arte, the novel, and the opera. Authors and artists may include Giambattista Basile, Giambattista Marino, Galileo, Arcangela Tarabotti, Isabella Andreini, Monteverdi, Pergolesi, Bernini, Caravaggio, and Carlo Goldoni. There will also be units on books, visual arts and music, with guest lectures and visits to Rauner Special Collections and the Hood Museum.
Prerequisites
ITAL 10 or permission of the instructor.
Distributive and/or World Culture
Dist: LIT; WCult: W