Italian Renaissance: A New Reading

Catalog description

The Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of Western history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, and Machiavelli in political thought. This seminar provides an overview of Italian culture from the 14th to the 16th century, examining not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and the history of food and fashion. It reflects recent trends in scholarship in investigating the extent to which Renaissance ideas and cultural trends became diffused beyond the social elites to a wider public, and the extent to which women participated in literary and artistic culture alongside men. The course is based on the instructor’s most recent book, A Short History of the Italian Renaissance.