Foundations of Renaissance

Recommended Prerequisites

NA

Teaching Methods

Classes follow a theoretical-practical standard recurring whenever necessary to the reading, analysis and comment of texts of works inserted in the main bibliography or of other titles considered relevant to the teaching of the items belonging to the program. Some sessions are also foreseen to direct students when they are involved in the composition of written essays, to discuss the theme, structure and, of course, their development. Besides, a weekly timetable is also foreseen to attend students, so that they can present and clarify their doubts.

Learning Outcomes

The main goal of this discipline is to provide to the students the main features of the Italian Renaissance, regarding the way they are projected in the different fields of literary and artistic production and centering for that purpose the attention on the study of some works of different nature, so that this period and its production may easily be understood and contextualized, enabling the comprehension of the way how it spreads through the erudite world of the time and in the future up to the moment.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

The revival, reading and recovery of the models of the Classical Antiquity was one of the most leading marks of the Renaissance Humanism, that had in Italy its natural origin. That will to restablish the contact with an epoch considered of flourishing success in every field of knowledge and culture projected, even though in a different way, in literary field, as well in religion or art, science, law, or philosophy, breaking the bonds of the medieval scholastic, recurring to the critical study of the texts.
Side by side with the settlement of the Humanism regarded as the recovery and synthesis of the moral and intelectual values of Ancient Antiquity and of the jew and christian legacy, in paralell, takes place the fall of the Western Roman Empire, that brings as a consequence of the arrival of the bizantin helenists to Italy the cultural boom and the flowering of new centers of diffusion of Renaissance knowledge, hastening the religious Reformation and the consequent Counterreformation.

Head Lecturer(s)

Manuel Simplício Geraldo Ferro

Assessment Methods

Final Assessment
Exam: 100.0%

Bibliography

Campanella, T. (2014). La Città del Sole. Milano: Feltrinelli [Trad. Álvaro Ribeiro]. Lisboa: Guimarães Editores.

Castiglione, B. (2008). Il Libro del Cortegiano. Milano: Garzanti [Trad. C. A. Brito. Campo das Letras, 2008].

Ceserani, R.; De Federicis, L. (1981). Il Materiale e l’Immaginario. La Società Signorile. Torino: Loescher.

Della Casa, G. (2008). Il Galateo. Milano: Garzanti.

Machiavelli, N. (2014). Il Principe. Milano: Garzanti [Trad. D. P. Aurélio]. Lisboa: Editora 11x17.