Courses 2007-08

Italian Literature and Culture

ITALLIT 127. Inventing Italian Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca—The origins of Italian literature. Poetry such as 13th-century love lyrics, Dante’s Vita Nuova, and Petrarca’s Canzoniere; prose such as stories from Boccaccio’s Decameron. Prerequisite: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent. GER:DB-Hum. 4 units, Aut (Wittman, L)

ITALLIT 128. The Italian Renaissance and the Path to Modernity—The literature, art, and history of the Renaissance and beyond. Readings from the 15th through 18th centuries include Moderata Fonte, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Tasso, Galileo, and Goldoni. Prerequisite: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent. GER:DB-Hum. 4 units, Win (Springer, C)

ITALLIT 129. Modern Italian History and Literature—The history of the Italian nation and national literary identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Focus is on the Risorgimento and the romantic lyric, futurism, feminism, fascism, and resistance. Authors include Foscolo, Leopardi, Verga, D’Annunzio, Aleramo, Marinetti, Pirandello, Ungaretti, and Montale. Prerequisite: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent. GER:DB-Hum. 4 units, Spr (Alberti, G)

ITALLIT 189A. Honors Research—Senior honors students enroll for 5 units in Winter while writing the honors thesis, and may enroll in 189B for 2 units in Spring while revising the thesis. Prerequisite: DLCL 189. 5 units, Win (Staff)

ITALLIT 189B. Honors Research—Open to juniors with consent of adviser while drafting honors proposal. Open to senior honors students while revising honors thesis. Prerequisites for seniors: 189A, DLCL 189. 2 units, Spr (Staff)

ITALLIT 199. Individual Work. 1-12 units, Aut, Win, Spr (Staff)

ITALLIT 249. Love and Death in the Decameron—The Black Death as the greatest natural disaster in European history, killing more than a quarter of Europe’s population in four years. How the plague occasioned one of the masterpieces of western literature, Boccaccio’s Decameron, which explores a parallel universe ruled not by death, but by love, a physical, sensual force that subverted the idealized conventions of medieval courtly love. 4 units, not given this year.

ITALLIT 285. Identity in Modern Italian Fiction—The quest for a modern identity in the 20th-century Italian novel. The construction of subjectivity as it relates to changes brought about by modernity in Italy, such as mass culture, nationalism, industrialization, feminism, war, secularization, migration, and ethnic diversity. Fiction by Svevo, Pirandello, Calvino, Banti, and Tabucchi. In Italian. 3-5 units, Aut (Wittman, L)

ITALLIT 299. Individual Work. 1-12 units, Aut, Win, Spr, Sum (Staff)

ITALLIT 399. Individual Work—For graduate students working on a special project or predissertation research. May be repeated for credit. 1-15 units, Aut, Win, Spr, Sum (Staff)

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