Course description
The literary works of Dante and Petrarch represent one of the major summits of Italian culture throughout history and one of the highest achievements of world literature at large. Each of them, in his own way, developed a new way of examining fundamental questions regarding human existence, the human self and human love and quest for fame. Moreover, both authors, Dante and Petrarch developed new sensibility toward time and history, new mode of perceiving human languages (their power to convey truth but also to deceive) and new modes of understanding artistic creativity. Last but not least, both offered new insight into the relation between man and God. Their achievements were so original, bold and far reaching that their relevancy for today’s modern and even postmodern linguistics and psychology has become a focal theme in recent scholarship.
We shall read selected writings of Dante and Petrarch and discuss the significance and meaning of their innovative ideas and artistic devices for their own contemporaries as well as for us-readers of the 21th century.

Teaching and Evaluation method
Presentations in class: 20%
final paper 80%

Syllabus
Week 1. Introduction: The birth of Humanism in Italy around 1300, its origin and cultural agenda. Reading: R. G. Witt. In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism From Lovado to Bruni. Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 1-30.
Week 2. The linguistic shift and the discovery of a new esthetics. Reading: R. G. Witt. In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism From Lovado to Bruni. Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 31-80.
Week 3. Dante’s innovative approach to language. Reading: Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, translated into English by S. Botterill, Cambridge, 1996, Book I.
Week 4. Dante’s view on poetry. Reading: Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, Book II.
Week 5. Petrarch’s theological conflict. Reading: Petrarch, “The Ascent of Mont Ventoux,” in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. E. Cassirer, P. O. Kristeller and J. H. Randall, Chicago, 1956, pp. 36-46; R. Darling, “The Ascent of Mt. Ventoux and the Crisis of Allegory,” Italian Quarterly, 18 (1974): 7-28.
Week 6-7. Petrarch’s struggles with his own self. Reading: Petrarch’s Secret or the Soul’s Conflict with Passion: Three Dialogues between Himself and S. Augustine, translated from the Latin by W. H. Draper, Folcroft, Pa. 1974, Introduction and the first dialogue; H. Baron, Petrarch’s Secretum: Its Making and its Meaning, Cambridge, Mass., 1985.
Week 8. Challenges from contemporary readers. Reading: J. Freccero, “The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch’s Poetics,” Diacritics 5 (1975): 34-40. T. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New haven, 1982, pp. 81-103, pp. 104-126
Week 9. Petrarch’s struggles with his own self. Reading: Book II of Petrarch’s Secret or the Soul’s Conflict with Passion: Three Dialogues between Himself and S. Augustine, translated from the Latin by W. H. Draper, Folcroft, Pa. 1974.
Week 10. Petrarch’s through the prism of J. Mazzotta. Reading: J. Mazzotta. The Worlds of Petrarch. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 1-13, 14-32, 58-79.
Week 11. Petrarch on the sin of carnal love. Reading Book III of Petrarch’s Secret or the Soul’s Conflict with Passion: Three Dialogues between Himself and S. Augustine, translated from the Latin by W. H. Draper, Folcroft, Pa. 1974.
Week 12. Conclusions and final remarks on Petrarch’s innovative thoughts on God, the “self,” and human creation. Reading: M. R. Waller, Petrarch’s Poetics and Literary History, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980, pp. 3-26. B. Stock. “Reading, Writing, and the Self.” Petrarch and his Forerunners.” New Literary History 26 (1995): 717-730.