Topic 1. Florence: Boccaccio's Decameron​ in Medieval Florence: Storytelling, Society and Gender in Crisis

Florence, 1348. Fleeing from the deadliest pandemic in recorded history, a company of seven young women and three young men take shelter in the countryside. In order to console each other and pass the time, they take turns in telling stories. Self-isolation is the frame of the one hundred tales that make up Boccaccio’s Decameron. But the tales break out of these idyllic confines. They range across medieval Florence, the Italian peninsula, Western Europe, the Mediterranean; its protagonists come from the working classes, the clergy, the decadent aristocracy, and the new rising class of merchants and university-educated professionals. In these lectures, seminars and supervisions we explore the realistic world of the Decameron with a focus on storytelling, social relations, and gender roles.

Core text

Read as much of the Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron as you can. Lectures and exams will focus on the following novelle but a wider knowledge of the text will always improve your essays:

• Proem
• Introductions and Conclusions to each giornata
• I,1 I,5 I,6
• II,3 II,5 II,10
• III,1 III,3 III,4 III,7 III,9
• IV,1 IV,7 IV,8 IV,9
• V,9
• VI,1 VI,2 VI,3 VI, 4 VI, 5 VI, 7 VI,8 VI,9 VI, 10
• VII,6 VII, 7 VII,8
• VIII,3 VIII,5 VIII,6 VIII,7 VIII,9
• IX,3 IX,7 IX,8
• X,6 X,10

Recommended editions

Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. by Vittore Branca et al., 10 vols (Milan, 1964-1998). The gold standard with extensive notes.   Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. by Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla, and Giancarlo Alfano (Milan: BUR, 2013). Excellent paperback with helpful notes. Cheap English translations are widely available. Check out OUP and Penguin.

For secondary reading for this module, see the IT5 Moodle page.

Topic 2. The “Prince” and the State in Renaissance Italy’s Court Culture: Machiavelli’s Political Thought

This topic investigates some of the political writings by the Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose treatise Il Principe, arguably one of the most famous texts on politics ever written, brought him a reputation as an atheist and an immoral cynic. But was Machiavelli, as he is usually remembered, really “Machiavellian”, a wicked teacher of tyrants advising them on how to gain power and achieve success through scheming deceit? To better understand his political thought, Il Principe will be read alongside another of his works, the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy). Both works were first printed only after Machiavelli’s death, respectively in 1532 and 1531. The two works are strictly related, yet different in substance and approach. Whereas Il Principe is particularly concerned with how new princes can acquire power, create a state, and keep it, the Discorsi focuses on the preservation of republics. Il principe and the Discorsi are investigated against the wider background of Renaissance Italy’s court culture and the decades of turmoil and war that marked Machiavelli’s own life.

Core texts Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe (any Italian edition, but you might want to choose one that has good footnotes; you will find copies of the text at the UL and MMLL library, as well as in your College library. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio (any Italian edition), selection of chapters only.

You might also want to read the following, in relation to Machiavelli’s Discorsi: Francesco Guicciardini, Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio [1528] (any edition)

The bibliography on Machiavelli and his writings is vast. Editions in Italian and English of Il principe and the Discorsi include in their introduction a section on the author’s life and works and on the political and social context of his time.   

For further details and further readings to prepare for the course, please see the IT5 Moodle page.

Topic 3. Grazia Deledda's Sardinia in Post-Unification Italy  

In 1926, the Sardinian Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) became one of the few women to receive a Nobel prize. But the path to literary recognition had not been an easy one. She had to struggle against odds to have her voice heard as a writer: she had to overcome the obstacles of language and culture and the hostility of her own community. Deledda grew up speaking dialect, had little formal schooling, and was born into an insular world that strongly frowned upon women who had intellectual aspirations and hoped for literary recognition beyond the world of domesticity. A very prolific writer, her works uniformly testify to her love for her native island, whose landscape is often portrayed as a metaphor for the difficulties in her characters’ lives. Her fiction often encapsulates the tension and conflict between the ancient ways of a world rooted in archaic values and the new modern mores brought along by political, cultural and social change. Peasant culture, moral codes and dilemmas, love and passion, religion and magic, temptation, sin and expiation, and sin, are dramatized in her writings. Her narratives speak to modern readers and touch upon topics and themes that are still nowadays debated issues: gender and feminism, social order, transgression, and economics.

Core texts (you must read at least 3 of the following novels; any Italian editions): •    La via del male (1896) •    Elias Portolu (1903) •    Cenere (1904) •    L’edera (1908) •    Canne al vento (1913) •    Marianna Sirca (1915) •    L’incendio nell’uliveto (1918) •    La madre (1920)

Students are strongly encouraged to further explore Deledda’s rich oeuvre (novels, short stories, and theatre). Note that her posthumous Cosima (1937) is considered to be partly autobiographical.

For further information and a bibliography to prepare for the course, see the IT5 Moodle page.

Topic 4. TBC