Euro Lit: Italian Renaissance

Renaissance Italy

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The focus of this lesson is Florence (Firenze).

Crash Course European History: Florence and the Renaissance

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

•  Boccaccio's The Decameron:
• A collection of stories about a group of young Florentine people who are trying to escape the Black Plague by hiding out in the a nearby, secluded villa.
• Written in the Florentine vernacular
• masterpiece of early Italian prose
• The Medici:
• A prominent family of Florence whose influence resounds throughout the Renaissance
• banking and political dynasty
• Cosimo Medici most well known
• Four Popes: Leo X (refused the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon), Clement VII (Henry VIII breaks from the Catholic Church to form the Church of England), Pius IV, and Leo XI
• Patrons of the arts: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, etc.
• Like the Borgia of Rome
• bankrolled the invention of the piano and the opera
• Donatello and St. Mark: first free standing statue

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Brunelleschi's Dome

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Petrarchism: 
• Written in the style of Petrarch
• literary style found in most sonnets, canzone, madrigals, and sestine
• Spread to other literary traditions in Spain, France, and England
• Shakespeare's sonnets
• Classical Latin verse plus vernacular
• metaphorical descriptions----> "shining eyes" or "fire and ice" or "radiant smile"; paradoxes and oxymorons
• poems that are narrative, emotional, or ritual

------------------------------------------------------------------

The Divine Comedy- Bishop Robert Barron

For reading The Divine Comedy, I would suggest the following translation. It has fabulous notes and sketches to help the ready envision the scope of the tales.