History 099
Astarita
The Italian Renaissance
Reading introductions and questions
This handout introduces our readings (see the syllabus for more
detail on the order in which readings are due). It also provides some
questions to help start our discussions: please feel free to bring up
any other question that you find interesting for any of our
discussions. All our readings are available either on the course web
site or at the bookstore and on Reserves in book form (the latter for
the texts which we will read in their entirety or in large
selections).
Here are some considerations that you should keep in mind for all
our texts, as they pertain to the general - and related - issues of
audience and genre.
“Genre” indicates the category or type any text falls into; though
the term is primarily used in literary studies, genre applies to any
text of any sort. Each genre has its own rules, conventions, forms,
purposes, and implications, which may vary somewhat over time, and which
of course reflect the general characteristics of the culture each text
belongs to. In western culture there has been a strong continuity in
the characteristics of genres across long periods of time, and still
today many of our literary genres reflect conventions and standards set
in the works of authors from antiquity.
Thus, for instance, a “novel” is a longish work of fiction written
in prose, meant to be read primarily for entertainment (rather than,
say, for moral improvement), and in western culture generally novels
were not high on the scale of literary prestige, so that they may be
written in a more accessible style than, say, essays in philosophy or
religion. Authors, when they decide to write a text in a particular
genre, are usually well aware of that genre’s elements, and will be
influenced, to different extents, by its traditions. Texts of different
genres will also usually have different audiences (in terms of levels of
education, gender, professional status, or many other factors) and
authors may tailor their work to the traits they expect in their
audiences. Thus it is important to keep these kinds of questions in
mind as you read any text:
1. What were the audience and context for the text? What can we
learn, from looking carefully at the text itself, about its author’s
intentions and goals, about his/her intended audience, or about the
reasons that led the author to write the text, and to write it in the
way s/he did?
2. What genre does the text fall into? Is it fiction or non-fiction?
Based on your reading, how would you define the main characteristics
of its genre at the time the text was written? Did they limit or
strengthen the author’s work in any way?
Finally, a word about “historiography:” this term literally means
the history of history-writing itself, and generally describes the
overall work of all historians both in general and in specific fields
within history (e.g., there is of course a rich historiography of the
Italian Renaissance). Think of it as the on-going conversation among
all historians, since ancient times. Historians do not work in a
void: their questions, their methods, their sources, their concerns,
and their prejudices all come both from their own time and from the
accumulated work of prior generations of other historians. Reflecting
on this point can help us think more clearly about how multiple
interpretations can be possible and plausible for most historical
materials, sources, and questions.
Some of our readings for this class are the work of historians
from various recent generations (they are described briefly here
below). One point to keep in mind as you read these is that the
question of genre shapes historiographical work as well: historians,
at different time and for different purposes, may produce very
specific, focused analyses of very particular sources, questions, or
issues; or they may propose broad, general points and arguments that
aim to synthesize large amounts of knowledge, materials, and prior
more specific works; works in these two genres will be fairly
different from each other in approach, style, and even conventions.
Our readings include examples of both of these genres of historywriting.
Shorter, excerpted readings:
All our excerpted readings are on the course web site; here I
provide a minimal introduction to each of them. The excerpts are
listed here in the order in which you will read them, and organized by
week. After the excerpts, you will also find here somewhat longer
introductions (and information about what selections to read) for the
longer readings for the class.
September 4
Burckhardt
Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) was a Swiss academic historian. His
1860 book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy has been
enormously influential in shaping the study of the Renaissance to this
day. We will read a couple of pages from one of the most famous
sections.
September 11
Petrarch, Posterity and Mount Ventoux letters
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) was one of the first and
probably the greatest Humanist. He was also one of Italy's finest
poets and today his fame rests mostly on his beautiful lyric poetry;
in his lifetime, though, he was most admired for his classical
scholarship. He wrote many texts in Latin and collected and studied
manuscripts. His Letters, written in Latin, aimed to replicate the
genre of the moral or didactic letter as written by Cicero, Seneca,
and other ancient authors. This week we read excerpts from two of his
most famous letters: the one addressed to “Posterity” dates from
Petrarch’s last years, while the one addressed to Dionisio (who had
been Petrarch’s confessor) recounts events that occurred in 1336 but
was probably written in its final form in about 1350 (after Dionisio
had died).
Boccaccio, Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) came from a family of Florentine
merchants and in his youth was active in trade. He was also a
Humanist and writer of both scholarly and fictional works. His most
famous work is the Decameron, a massive collection of one hundred
short stories, framed by an elaborate frame narrative about ten storytellers entertaining each other by telling the stories. Boccaccio
sets his frame narrative at the time of the Black Death, the
devastating plague epidemic that killed off up to half of Europe's
population in 1347-52. We read an excerpt from the introduction, in
which Boccaccio included one of the most famous descriptions of the
plague.
Documents on the plague
We read short excerpts from local chronicles (i.e., city
histories) about the devastating plague of 1348, from the cities of
Siena (in Tuscany) and Padua (near Venice). Numerous city chronicles
were written during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in both Latin and
in the various European vernacular languages: the authors of these
texts usually identify themselves, but the focus is not their own
lives and histories, but the events in and around their city.
September 25
Vergerio
Vergerio (1370-1444/45) was a Humanist and teacher, and he
founded one of the earliest Humanist schools, fully devoted to the new
curriculum of studies focused on antiquity (see the excerpt document
for a slightly longer introduction).
Petrarch, Secretum and Letter to Cicero
The Secretum was a Latin work by Petrarch in which he imagined a
dialogue between himself and St. Augustine (d. 430 AD), the great
early Christian writer and saint. Much of the dialogue focuses on the
merit of the study of the antique versus the worth of a more purely
spiritual life focused on religious meditation.
Petrarch wrote several letters to his favorite ancient authors,
engaging in a sort of dialogue across time with these idealized
writers. The Letter to Cicero is an example.
Valla
Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was an Italian Humanist. His most
famous work was an essay that demonstrated, by using Humanist
philological methods, that the so-called "Donation of Constantine" (a
document purporting to transfer political dominion over central Italy
to the bishop of Rome, and used by medieval popes to justify the
papacy's claims to political power) was in fact a forgery dating to
several centuries after the time of Emperor Constantine (d. 337 AD).
We read from the preface to another work of his in support of the
effort to write in elegant Latin.
Bruni
Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370-1444) was a Florentine Humanist. As
chancellor of the republican government, and as one of the first
historians to write about the city on the ancient model, he
articulated strong defenses of the Florentine republican government
and of republican values. We read a short famous excerpt, from a 1427
eulogy for Nanni Strozzi, a prominent citizen, about the glories of
Florence and its republic.
October 2
Lopez article
This article, first delivered as a lecture in 1952, had an
enormous influence on two generations of economic historians studying
the Middle Ages and Renaissance. R.S. Lopez (1910-86) was one of the
most prominent economic historians working in the US in the midtwentieth century.
Goldthwaite “Luxury Consumption” article
Richard Goldthwaite is one of the most prominent living
historians of Renaissance Florence (he retired some years ago from
Johns Hopkins). We read an article (originally from 1985; we read a
slightly expanded 1987 reprint) focused on the Renaissance economy and
the significance of demand in economic history in general.
October 15
Bandello, Short story
Bandello (c. 1480-1562) was an Italian cleric (he ended his life
as a bishop in France), most famous for his collection of short
stories (first published in 1554); some of his stories were the basis
for some of Shakespeare’s plays, and they were all quite popular
across late Renaissance Europe. The one we read displays several
typical themes of this literary genre: romantic elements, sexual
playfulness, anti-clericalism, social and moral commentary, etc.
October 16
Kelly article
Joan Kelly (1928-82)’s article “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”,
which first appeared in 1977, has had an enormous influence not only
on the history of the Renaissance, but more generally on the entire
field of women’s and gender history. Her questions reframed many old
debates about the Renaissance and inspired many later historians in
their choice of topics and in their approach. [Please note that, for
this as for some of the other articles, the marks on the pages are
those left in the library copy - try to ignore them! Also, I have cut
a few pages from the first section of the article, in which Kelly
discusses her views of late medieval courtly ladies, i.e., in the
period before the Italian Renaissance]
Klapisch-Zuber article
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber is a prominent French historian of
women and of the Renaissance, with a special focus on the history of
the family in Renaissance Florence. Many of her books and essays have
been translated in English and other languages. The “Cruel Mother” is
a good example of her work, both in its topic and its use of
particular types of sources.
October 22
For this day, we will read a set of short documents on language:
they are each briefly introduced in the file I will post and/or in the
instructions you will receive.
October 30
Pico
Giovan Battista Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was an Italian
aristocrat and philosopher. One of the best educated men of his time,
he had eclectic interests in theology, philosophy, literature, and so
on. He is most famous for his "Oration on the Dignity of Man", in
which he presented an argument for the dignity and superiority of
humans to all other creatures. Pico is among the major figures in a
philosophical approach called Neo-Platonism, because it rejected the
dominant influence of Aristotle's ideas and embraced instead Plato's
more idealistic approaches and ideas.
November 5
Vespasiano
Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421-1498) was a Tuscan librarian and
biographer: he aided Cosimo de’ Medici in assembling and cataloguing
the Medici library, and he put together a collection of short Lives of
illustrious contemporaries, both political figures and other prominent
men, mainly but not only from Tuscany.
Machiavelli, History of Florence
Machiavelli (see below a longer discussion regarding the Prince)
wrote the History of Florence late in his life, in the early 1520s,
when he was seeking the support and patronage of the Medici family, at
that point back in power in Florence. It is one of the finest works
of Humanist history, written on the model of ancient historians.
November 20
Goldthwaite, “Identity and Consumerism” article
See above; this 1992 article focuses on the economic and cultural
impact of changes in consumption patterns.
December 4
Burke article
Peter Burke is a British historian who focuses particularly on
cultural history, of the Renaissance and of other periods of European
history. This 1987 piece discusses the cultural and social
significance of Renaissance portraits.
Venetian art inventories
This short document consists of excerpts from two sixteenthcentury inventories of Venetian collections (of art and other
objects).
Longer readings:
September 18 and October 1
Gene Brucker, ed., The Society of Renaissance Florence
The book edited by Gene Brucker (a prominent historian, now
retired from the University of California-Berkeley) consists of
collected archival and other primary texts from Renaissance Florence.
These are not literary texts, but largely the sorts of raw materials
from which modern historians work: contracts, family records, parish
records, personal memoirs, state documents, judicial and notarial
texts, etc. We will read different sections of the book at different
points: please follow the instructions in the syllabus for what and
when to read from it. One important purpose of this reading is for
you to have some sense of what kinds of practical and specific
information we have on the city and its inhabitants, and to use it to
discuss many elements of Florentine society, culture, and politics.
October 9
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Family
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) came from a patrician
Florentine family, but for the early part of his life his family was
in exile. He studied the classics, church law, and mathematics, and
in the 1430s obtained a job as a papal secretary. For the rest of his
life he combined papal service with travels to Florence and occasional
artistic work and advice for several Italian lords and despots
(Mantua, Urbino, Ferrara, Rimini). He became during his lifetime one
of the models of the "uomo universale," the many-sided man, and as
such he was glorified by Renaissance writers, and later by many
historians down to our own time. His artistic work was primarily as
an architect (his most famous works are churches and palaces in
Mantua, Rimini, and Florence). His writings include Latin and Italian
works, from satire to moral philosophy. The most famous, besides On
the Family, are a long treatise on architecture (written in 1452,
published in 1485), which discusses, based on classical models, the
importance of joining function and aesthetics in buildings, and
analyzes the building styles necessary to each type of building or
type of city and setting; and On Painting, written in Italian and
Latin in 1435-36, and only published in the sixteenth century. This
treatise created modern art criticism, by isolating aims and methods
painters should use, which came to be used by later critics as
standards of judgement. By stressing the intellectual elements of a
painter's work, Alberti's treatise also led to a higher status for
artists in Renaissance society. The Family dialogue was written at
various points during Alberti's life and not published until centuries
later. It contains his most famous views on non-artistic subjects; we
are reading all of Book III (of four books).
Here are some possible questions for discussion:
1. What are Alberti's views of social structures and of the
relationships between social classes? What are the signs of social
status in his society, and how important are they?
2. What is the proper role of religion in personal and family life?
3. What are his views of the economy? To what extent do you think his
views reflect a "capitalist" and mercantile mentality?
4. How effective do you find the text as a dialogue? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of this format? How interested or
successful is Alberti in the creation of psychologically or
intellectually convincing characters?
5. How important are the urban setting and identity to Alberti's
characters? How is their culture, or their economy, urban? What is
Alberti's view of civic involvement and communal activity?
6. What are Alberti's views of marriage and of the proper role of
women and men within it? What are the proper spheres of activity of
women and men, and why?
7. How important are ancient models in the establishment of the proper
way to live? What are the authoritative sources of knowledge
recognized by his characters?
8. What is Alberti's view of family relationship and of friendship?
What is their relative importance?
October 23 and 30
Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier
Baldesar Castiglione (1478-1529) came from an aristocratic family
from northern Italy. He spent most of his life in the service,
primarily diplomatic, of several Italian courts, particularly the
Gonzaga of Mantua, the dukes of Urbino, and the popes. His happiest
times were at the court of Urbino, a small duchy in central Italy.
Castiglione first served Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who was the last
duke of his family and died in 1508. Castiglione continued in the
service of the new duke Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew of the
prior duke and also of Pope Julius II. His last appointment was as
papal nuncio (i.e., ambassador) in Spain, where he was highly
respected by Charles V (at the time both emperor and king of Spain),
who once described Castiglione as the most perfect gentleman he had
ever encountered. The Book of the Courtier is Castiglione's most
important work. He finished it by 1518 but only published it in 1527.
It enjoyed an enormous success throughout Europe: it was translated in
many languages and widely read through the eighteenth century. The
book consists of discussions that supposedly took place at the court
of Urbino in the years before 1508, presided over by Duke Guidobaldo's
wife, the patient and chaste Elisabetta Gonzaga (Guidobaldo is widely
believed to have been impotent, and the marriage in any case was
childless). All the participants in the debate are actual courtiers
and intellectuals who attended the Urbino court. The most famous
among them is Pietro Bembo, a prominent poet and intellectual, author
of a very influential treatise on the proper formal language to be
used in Italian prose and poetry, and later a cardinal.
The pages listed here refer to the Penguin edition: you should
read Book I and pages 107-142 of Book II for the first week; and pages
207-226 and 238-278 of Book III, and pages 324-345 of Book IV for the
second week. If your edition has different page numbers, here are the
relevant selections: we will start by reading all of Book I and the
first 40% or so of Book II: you may stop reading Book II when the
dialogue characters embark on a long retelling of puns and jokes that
are part of a discussion of wit (most are not very funny, anyway).
For the following week we will read all of Book III (except for about
10 pages in which the characters start reviewing a series of examples
of great women from the past) and the final section of Book IV: you
should resume reading in Book IV when the characters engage in a
discussion of Platonic love (the final 20 pages or so).
Here are some possible questions for discussion:
1. The most obvious question concerns the qualities necessary to the
perfect courtier and the perfect lady. How do they differ? What
ideology and what vision of society emerge from these images of
perfection? What do their differences tell us of the role of women in
Renaissance aristocratic society and culture?
2. How important is reputation to the courtier and the lady, and how
is reputation gained, maintained, and lost?
3. What is the relationship between the courtier and his lord? What
do we learn from this book of the political conditions of sixteenthcentury Italy?
4. How should the courtier and the lady be educated? What is the role
of classical models in their education and training?
5. How important are morality and religion to the proper functioning
of court society?
6. What is the image and role of love in Neoplatonic philosophy?
November 6
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote The Prince around 1514. He was a
member of a middling Florentine family, of reasonable wealth but not
among the most prominent. He had a long, though not terribly
distinguished, career in the Florentine political bureaucracy. At the
time he wrote The Prince, he was out of favor because of recent
political changes in Florence: Machiavelli supported the republican
government of Florence which replaced the rule by the Medici family in
1494-1512, but the family came back to power in 1512 and Machiavelli
came under considerable political suspicion and danger. He wrote also
in the midst of the Italian Wars, a prolonged series of conflicts
fought primarily in Italy over European hegemony.
The book follows a medieval and Humanist tradition of books known
as "mirrors of princes." These were treatises depicting and
discussing the ideal prince, all the virtues that he should have, all
the vices he should shun. In this context, "prince" meant any ruler
of a state; it did not mean necessarily someone who had the title of
Prince, but anyone who found himself the ruler of a state, by whatever
means, and of whatever state. Machiavelli's analysis applied also to
the political behavior of states that had preserved the republican
form of government, and for example the "Venetians" (that is, the
republican government of Venice) can be considered another "prince,"
whose political success depends on the same forces Machiavelli
discusses for all states. Machiavelli's book subverted the
traditional "mirrors" in that his suggestions for proper behavior do
not follow traditional Christian values, but rather emphasize the need
to consider the reality of actual political life.
Here are some questions for possible discussion:
1. What do you see as Machiavelli's goals in writing the Prince? How
does the structure and organization of the book help achieve them?
2. What are the bases for Machiavelli's arguments? Why and how does
he use ancient history? How solid do you find his arguments?
3. What are the qualities the prince needs for Machiavelli? What
skills and knowledge? How does Machiavelli define "prudence"?
4. What is the relationship Machiavelli sees between "fortune" and
"virtue"? Are they necessarily opposed? How can the prince deal with
this problem?
5. How important is what a situation actually is compared to what it
appears to be, for Machiavelli? What is, in this regard, the
importance of "reputation" and of public opinion? What would the
latter be, in the Italy of Machiavelli's time?
6. What is Machiavelli's opinion of human nature? On what is it
based? How does it help refine his arguments?
7. What is the relationship between internal and external affairs of
the state? What is the role of war in Machiavelli's view of politics?
8. Are Machiavelli's ideas only applicable to the Italian situation of
his times? Can his ideas be seen as relevant to politics today?
9. How would you define Machiavelli's views of the clergy and of
religion? Are they the same, or if not, how are they related?
10. What does the prince owe to his people? What can he expect from
them?
November 13, 20, and December 4
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a Tuscan artist and writer.
Trained in the arts by Michelangelo and others, he became a respected
painter in the Mannerist style of the mid-sixteenth century. His most
important works were made for Cosimo I, the first Medici grand-duke of
Tuscany (ruled 1537-1574), for whom Vasari executed major projects in
Palazzo Vecchio, the old seat of republican government. Though he was
considered a great artist in his lifetime, he is not seen today as an
artist of major importance. His greatest fame, and influence up to
our times, was as the author of the Lives of the Artists, which
appeared in the 1550s, and again, in a revised and enlarged edition,
in 1568. Vasari shaped the way art historians have thought about
Italian art to this day. His identification of the works of
Brunelleschi, Masaccio, and Donatello as the true beginning of the
Renaissance remains the standard interpretation of the period. His
view of Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo as the highest peak
reached by art at any time, surpassing even the glory of the ancients,
also was extremely influential on later art historical studies. He is
also in significant part responsible for the Florence-centric view of
the Renaissance that permeates the historiography and art history of
Renaissance Italy practically to this day. Though the second edition
of the Lives contained much information about developments outside of
the Florentine school, the latter was still central to Vasari's
understanding of what the Renaissance was all about.
See the syllabus for specifics about which selections to read
over the three weeks we will use the Vasari text. If the edition you
are using does not include some of the assigned Lives, let me know and
we will come up with some alternative.
Here are possible questions for discussion:
1. How do you find the Lives as history? With what criteria can we
assess Vasari's accuracy, interest, effectiveness as a historian?
2. What is the purpose of the Lives? What aim does Vasari, as an
artist writing about artists, set for himself? What do you think is
the intended audience of the Lives?
3. Does Vasari have a coherent theory of art? Can we draw from the
Lives his general views on the purpose and methods of the figurative
arts? Does he have a hierarchy between painting, sculpture and
architecture? If so, what is it based upon?
4. How important is religion in art, according to Vasari? For
instance, how important are religious subjects in assessing an
artist's output? How important are morality and religion in assessing
artists as individuals?
5. What does Vasari see as the greatest achievements of the
Renaissance artists?
6. What is Vasari's view of genius? What makes certain artists
superior? How important is training to an artist's achievement? Does
Vasari seem to define a specific human type that artists represent?
If so, what are its characteristics?
7. What can we learn from the Lives about developments in the social
status of artists and in the relationship between artists and patrons?