Pre- and Early Modern Literature - Winter 1999

LTPR 183 will offer a close reading of the Divine Comedy by Dante (1265-1321) [the Divine Comedy consists of three poetic books or cantiche, one each devoted to one of the three realms of the after-life: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise]. We will focus on Dante as a love poet, a political poet, an exilic writer; we will examine the formal, generic, symbolic, gender, and thematic aspects of this work, within its ideological and historical context.

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" (Leave behind all hope, ye who enter!): Read this Medieval classic epic and discover everything that you ever wanted to know about sin and its punishments. Follow Dante, as he is led by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory, and learn about lust,anger, betrayal, sodomy, and things unspeakable. Ascend into Paradise and behold the rewards of the virtuous. Experience first hand this master of poetic imagery and verse; learn why we use the term "poetic justice" to describe Dante's vivid imagination of how the punishment fits the crime.

LTPR 183 has no prerequisites and requires no Italian. We will use bilingual texts. Course taught in English.

Readings include:

Selections from the Medieval Love Lyric Tradition (Provencal & Italian)

The Vita Nuova, Dante's youthful autobiography (1292) about his love for Beatrice.

Dante's early erotic poems ("Stony Poems)"

Dante's Inferno; Purgatorio; selections from the Paradiso

Virgil, Aeneid, Books 4 & 6

St. Augustine, Confessions, Books 1-8.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, selected myths

Throughout the quarter we will read selected critical essays; quest lecture presentations on Medieval art.

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Class requirements:

(1) Faithful Attendance at both lectures per week, Tuesday & Thursday; and at the weekly section meetings;

(2) two papers: one short, 5 pages; one longer, with a research component (8 pages);

(3) final examination (written).

For further information contact Prof. Margaret Brose, 227 Cowell; x-94575.

Email: mbrose@cats.ucsc.edu

(Students who want credit in Italian will enroll under LTIT 130A).

Instructor: Carla Freccero
Phone: 429-5364; x3532

This course will explore the European inheritance of definitions of "woman"and "man" across categories of caste, "race," and sexual practice by lookingat texts from the early modern period in Italy, France, and England. We will study the symbolic meanings of sexual difference in the literary works of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Rabelais, Ronsard, Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, and Shakespeare (among others), while looking at legal, medical, and political documents that define humans as male and female, men and women. The course will also include a historical dimension: we will read the work of current historians of gender and sexuality in the early modern period. Topics to be covered: cross-caste definitions of gender; sexuality and criminality; fictional constructs of gender; sexuality and identity; gender and "religion/race."

Possible texts include

Boccaccio, Decameron

Brucker,ed., The Society of Renaissance Florence

Castiglione, The Courtier

Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre

Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual

Laqueur, Making Sex

Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron

Rabelais, Pantagruel and Gargantua

Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros

Shakespeare, Othello; Merchant of Venice

Migiel, Schiesari, eds., Refiguring Woman

Montaigne, Essais

Richards, Sex, Dissidence & Damnation

Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence

Ferguson et al., eds., Rewriting the Renaissance

Jed, Chaste Thinking

Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia

Requirements: 1) Attendance and Class participation

2) 3 papers; 5-7 pages for the 1st two; 10-15 for the last

3) Oral presentations (2); and research (final paper may develop research project)

Revised 7/27/04.