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 that the intellectual, the writer, and the artist should play in society. By analyzing and contextualizing a variety of representative texts - including poetry, visual arts, and scientific and political treatises - students will examine the complex relationship between imagination and power. 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 cultural production, including the lesser-known works by significant women of the time. Letter grade. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits