HON 315 - Power and Imagination in the Italian Renaissance

Prerequisite, acceptance to the University Honors Program. The European Renaissance marked a time of a heightened quest for truth in different fields and of a conscious and deliberate attempt to change the way people thought and acted in the world. During this revolutionary period, Italy served as the crucible for the formation of new ideals and values as well as a new understanding of the role the intellectual, writer, and artist should play in society. By analyzing and contextualizing a variety of representative texts-including poetry, visual arts, and scientific and political treatises-we will examine the complex relationship between imagination and power dynamics of a political and religious nature. The dilemmas of caution and resoluteness, simulation and dissimulation, heroism and conformity, orthodoxy and innovation, will be considered as some of the themes shaping early modern western literary and cultural production. The emphasis will focus upon epoch-making thinkers and artists such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Alberti, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bruno, and Galileo. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits