Introduction to Early Modern Italian Literature

This course focuses on the historical development of mid- to late- sixteenth-, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Italian literature. We will read the works of major Italian authors in relation to their impact on both Italian and European culture, from the last days of the Renaissance to the onset of Arcadia. While discussing the representative literary and philosophical works of these two centuries, we will examine the evolution/involution of the intellectual class, the hegemony of religious and political power over science and the arts and how literature emerges from the society which it attempts to change or describe. (1 Unit) Required text: M. Pazzaglia, Letteratura italiana. Testi e critica con lineamenti di storia letteraria. Vol. II. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1992-1993.