ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: ITALIAN 1082
Dennis Looney
CL 202
T TH 2:30 - 3:45
Office hours: T 12-2; TH 12-2; W 3-6; and by appointment—in fact, it is best if you schedule an
appt in advance via phone (4-6264) or e-mail (looney@pitt.edu).
This course examines the salient features of Renaissance Humanism from the vantage point of
Italian literature between, approximately, 1350 and 1550. The course proceeds on the
assumption that Italian Renaissance Humanism was the single most powerful force behind many
of the cultural changes that occurred in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe. Humanism, a
pedagogical program based on the study and recuperation of classical antiquity, had a direct
impact on the development of schools and universities across early modern Europe, and in many
ways it leads us to the study of the humanities in the contemporary American university.
TEXTS
Burke, P. The Renaissance. Humanities Press 1990.
Corbett, E. + R. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford U Press 1998.
Italian Renaissance Reader. Eds. J.C. Bondanella + M. Musa. Meridian Press 1987. (IRR)
Poliziano, Angelo. Le Stanze. U Mass Press 1979.
Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Ed. E. Cassirer. U of Chicago Press 1986. (RPM)
Woodward, W.H. Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist Educators: An Introduction to
the History of Classical Education. Rpt. U of Toronto Press 1996. (VDF)
Various photocopies to purchase throughout the semester.
SCHEMATIC SYLLABUS (to be supplemented with bi-weekly mini-syllabuses)
Weeks 1-2
INTRODUCTION: the problem of the Renaissance; tradition and the classics;
definitions; chronology; humanism; imitatio; studia humanitatis; rhetoric and oratory; method;
experience vs. authority. (readings from TR, VDF, and IRR)
Weeks 3-4
PETRARCA: Petrarch’s attack against Scholastic philosophy; the Petrarchan
manner in lyric poetry; P's recourse to the original models of classical eloquence; the master of
Christian humanism; readings from Petrarch’s Canzoniere; Letters; Coronation Oration; On his
own ignorance and that of many others; and Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern
Student. (IRR, RPM, photocopies)
First oral assignment. Working with a partner, compose an invective of 2-3 minutes
modeled on the typical humanist diatribe, e.g., Petrarch’s On his own ignorance. Choose
one of you to deliver before class in week 4. Self-assessment exercise and classmate’s
critiques will help me evaluate the speech. Class will critique speech following guidelines
drawn from Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.
Weeks 5-6
BOCCACCIO: the rise of narrative fiction in the vernacular; the medieval
distrust of mundane fiction; B's self-defense in the Decameron and in the Genealogie; B's
defense of Dante. (IRR and photocopies)
Weeks 7-9
BRUNI: civic humanism in Florence at the beginning of the Quattrocento;
deepened understanding of Roman history; new appreciation of classical oratory; the growing
importance of Greek culture for the Italians; Bruni’s Laudatio Urbis Florentinae and Dialogue to
Pier Paolo Vergerio; Vergerio’s Concerning Liberal Studies; Bruni’s Concerning the Study of
Literature. (photocopy and VDF)
Second oral assignment: Using Bruni’s Praise of the City of Florence as your model,
prepare a speech in praise of a country, city, neighborhood, or some other specific place
that you know well. Your speech should be 4-5 minutes. It should follow the sequence of
parts discussed in Bruni’s work: introduction, narration, proof, and conclusion. Deliver
before class in week 9. Class will critique speech following guidelines drawn from
Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.
Week 10
ALBERTI and LEONARDO: humanism in the vernacular; architecture; science;
the practical application of classical learning; idiosyncratic humanists. (IRR)
PAPER due end of week 10.
Week 11
PICO and FICINO: Neoplatonism in Florence at the end of the Quattrocento; the
rise and fall of Savanorola’s theocratic regime; Ficino’s Concerning the Mind; Pico’s Oration on
the Dignity of Man (RPM and photocopies)
Week 12
POLIZIANO and LORENZO DEI MEDICI: the new philology; the
dismemberment of the classical past; imitatio, contaminatio, intertextuality. Poliziano’s Le
Stanze; Lorenzo’s Ambra (photocopies)
Week 13
MACHIAVELLI + GUICCIARDINI: the sense of history and the practice of
historiography; the importance of method and the search for it; The Prince; excerpts from the
Discourses and Guicciardini’s Ricordi. (IRR)
Week 14
From Renaissance Humanism to the Humanities and beyond.
Third oral assignment: Compose a speech (5 minutes) in which you argue the degree to
which the modern university curriculum in general, and your experience of it in particular,
is linked to the curriculum of the studia humanitatis as developed by Renaissance
humanists. To what extent can we claim that the education of university students in the
USA is based on the pedagogical program of Renaissance Humanism? To what extent do
the humanities broadly understood derive from and reflect the thinking and writing of the
early modern period? Class will critique speech following guidelines drawn from Corbett’s
Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.
The FINAL EXAM will be a take-home essay due at the end of exam week.
EVALUATION:
3 oral assignments
1 paper due at midterm
final exam (take-home)
class participation
10% each
25%
25%
20% (includes the weekly low-stakes writing
assignments)
A word on the course requirements.
1) Oral Assignments
You are asked to give three speeches that should reflect in various ways examples of
oratory that we will be studying in class. You will not be allowed to give make-up speeches
at some later date. Speeches are to be given without reading from a written text or reciting
a whole written text from rote memory. I will give number grades to each speech on
reviewing your self-critique and your classmates’ critique of the speech, as follows:
 1 means a speech whose faults outweighed its virtues.
 2 means a speech whose faults and virtues were balanced.
 3 means a speech whose virtues outweighed its faults.
 4 (extremely rare) means a breakthrough into memorable eloquence.
I will then move from these number grades to a collective letter grade, which will also
factor in reward for improvement, or penalty for decline, over the arc of the semester.
2) Self-critiques
Each student speech will be videotaped. Your sets of self-critiques (due first class after
each speech) are to be based on your reviewing your speeches on video, and when you hand
in each self-critique you should also lend me your video so that I can review them too.
Your self-critiques should be at least two double-spaced pages, and written with the same
kind of care to organization and format as you would give any other paper. I will take
your self-critique into consideration when I formulate my own response to your speech.
Before the first is due we will discuss in more detail what I will be looking for in the selfcritiques.
3) Writing Exercises
10 of the Thursday classes will begin promptly with a 15-minute writing exercise based on
that day’s reading. It will be open book, hence you will handicap yourself if you forget to
bring the book to class, and it is understood that a commitment to the course is a
commitment to purchasing the books for it. It will not be a quiz, with factual questions
having correct or incorrect answers. Rather, it will be an exploratory philosophical
question which only a careful reading of the text will have enabled you to address
intelligently. As such, it will be keyed to directions the subsequent discussion might well
lead into. It will be graded 3, 2, 1 or 0:
 0 means you show you did not do the reading, or were absent.
 1 means you made a minimal but unsatisfactory answer to the question.
 2 means you made a competent answer to the question demonstrating clearly that
you have read the text with care.
 3 means you made an exceptional insightful and well written answer.
Your average on the writing exercises will factor into the participation grade and will also
be used to inflect your average grade for your three speeches. If your cumulative writing
exercise average is near 3, that will notch your speech-average grade up; if near 1, that will
notch it down; if around 2, your speech grade will be maintained.
4) Class Participation
Class participation grading will be based on:
 coming to class and arriving on time
 writing exercises
 written self-critiques of your 3 speeches


participating in class in a way that shows you have done the readings thoughtfully
speaking up and speaking well in class

5) Paper and Exam
More info on these items in due course.