Ghosts and Otherworldly Visions in Italy c. 1300-1600

Catalog description

This course explores ghost storytelling and visions of the afterlife in early Italian literature and culture. Motivations for telling ghost stories go far beyond entertaining or inducing fear in an audience. Ghost stories can engage some of the most profound human inquiries, mortality, grief, commemoration, spirituality, ethics, human imagination, and the violations of proper societal behavior. This course will explore such issues in a range of readings (poetry, short stories, diaries, and dialogues), including works by Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Ficino, Machiavelli, and Ariosto. In addition to a foundational survey knowledge and contextualization of some of the greatest works of medieval/Renaissance Italian literature, successful students of this course will receive a deep understanding of the potentials of authorial power and the rhetorical strategies that storytellers use to convince or manipulate the beliefs and emotions of their readers through close study of the primary texts, active in-class discussions, practice in critical interpretation, and individual experiments in the creative composition of spirit narratives. This 3-credit course is taught in English, and no knowledge of Italian is expected.