Inventing Italian Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca

Catalog description

Why have the Italian poets Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Francis Petrarch (1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) been conventionally considered the three foundational authorities of the Italian literary tradition? What was their role in the formation of the Italian vernacular language, which is at the core of Italy's linguistic identity? What is the ideological significance of the grouping of these Three Crowns (tre corone), and how does it impact our critical understanding of the origins of Italian literature, as well as of the process of constructing Italy's cultural identity? To what extent has the intellectual legacy of the Three Italian Crowns contributed to shaping the formation of the literary canons of the main European nations? In order to address these and other questions, this course will explore the major works of these three authors within the context of medieval Italian literature and culture by focusing on the stylistic and critical analyses of specific genres: lyric poetry (the Sicilian school, the Dolce Stil Novo, Dante's early poetry, Petrarch's Canzoniere), long narrative poetry (Dante's Commedia), and short story or novella (Boccaccio's Decameron, its antecedent, Il Novellino, and some of its late medieval epigoni). As a continuation of the study of the Italian language, this course will also aim at improving the students' level of reading, writing, and speaking through the discussion of complex theoretical topics, as well as through the formulation and defense of critical arguments at an advanced linguistic level. For this reason, the course is taught in Italian and all class discussion, reading, and writing will be in Italian; the selected primary texts in medieval vernacular will be accompanied by paraphrases in modern Italian and by an exhaustive apparatus of critical and explanatory notes.