COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
FALL 2008
RSCP. 72100 -
Introduction to Renaissance Studies:Early Modern Print & its Detractors: Author
& Artist, Publisher & Reader GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3/4 credits,
Prof. Elsky, [93066] Cross listed with ENGL 81100, C L 80900 & ART 85000
This course will examine the possibilities that the mechanically
reproducible word and image brought to the production of the literary, visual,
and intellectual arts and their delivery to an audience. Readings will be drawn
from history, literature, and art history.
We will begin by considering the various ways print technology affected the
dissemination of ideas and information in early modern culture. We will then
turn to the impact of print on literature and art in relation to competing forms
of publication (painting, manuscript, and performance).
Topics will include the relation between painting and the reproducible print,
and the professionalization of the printmaker as artist in Italy and Northern
Europe; the rivalry between print publication and manuscript circulation of
verse and prose; the relation between print and performance versions of drama;
the development of the professional authorial persona and the resistance to
authorial status; the place of women writers in networks of publication; the
deployment of varied means of publication to negotiate position with family,
coteries, and patrons.
The course will end by considering the combination of text and image in the
illustrated publication of news of the conquest of the New World.
Topics will be examined in relation to specific writers and artists, including
Mantegna, Dürer, Diana Mantuana, Petrarch, Erasmus, Montaigne, Labé,
Shakespeare, Donne, Wroth, and Cortés.
Because this is a cross-disciplinary course, participants are encouraged to make
use of material from their home discipline.
Assignments will include an oral report and a semester project.
ART. 85010-Vasari: Artist/Historiographer GC:
M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Richter, [93259] Course open to Art
History students only. Permission of Executive Officer required for all others.
The name Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) is known to all art historians.
He is the designer of the Uffizi, one of the most important museums in the
world, which contains at its nucleus the collection of masterpieces amassed by
the Medici family.
Vasari himself worked for Cosimo I, the first grand duke of Tuscany, serving as
his chief architect and decorator. The Palazzo Signoria is frescoed by Vasari
with scenes extolling the triumphs of this illustrious dynasty. He established
the famous Accademia del Disegno in 1563 which would set the standard for formal
art institutions for the next 350 years.
In addition, he was active as a painter and architect in his native Arezzo,
which in the cinquecento, was part of Florentine territory.
Vasari is also the author of Le vita de’ più eccellenti scultori, pittori, ed
architetti, a work which ultimately eclipsed all his other efforts and
placed him in a special pantheon of cultural heroes.
First published in 1550 and then reissued in amplified form in 1568, Vasari’s
Lives has become the standard reference work for the study of Italian
Renaissance Art. An important cultural as well as historical document, it is
considered by Italians to be on a par with the works of Dante and Boccaccio.
Written by an artist for artists, his magnum opus has been both praised
and vilified over the centuries; its author described alternatively as an
excellent biographer or a witty and wicked and untrustworthy fabricator.
His praise of disegno over colorito inspired the great rivalries
between Poussin and Rubens in the seventeenth century and between Ingres and
Delacroix in the nineteenth century. In order to understand the true
importance of the Lives, Vasari’s work must be compared to those of his
contemporaries such as Ludovico Dolce, Bellori and Karl van Mander.
This seminar will address all aspects of Vasari’s career: his art and
historiography. Students should begin by reading his biography of Michelangelo,
an artist praised as the greatest of all times having not just rivaled the
ancient, but succeeding in surpassing them. Individual lives will be evaluated
as well his role as court artist and architect within the cultural milieu of
grand ducal Florence. Requirements: 30 minute seminar reports and a research
paper. Four (4) auditors permitted.
Preliminary
readings:
Vasari, Lives, 2 volumes, Penguin edition.
Vasari on Technique, Dover paperback, 1960
ART. 85020 - Interaction Italian & Northern
Renaissance Art GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Lane,
[93260] Course open to Art History students only. Permission of Executive
Officer required for all others.
A seminar dealing with the interchange of ideas north and south of
the Alps from 1300 to 1530 in painting, manuscript illumination, and
printmaking.
Lectures will focus on the reception of northern European art in Florence, in
conjunction with the exhibition, "Florence and the Low Countries," to be held at
the pitti Palace from June 20 to October 20.
Among the problems to be considered are Flemish painters and paintings in
Florence, Florentine patronage of Flemish painting, Flemish influences on
painters from Filippo Lippi to Raphael, the impact of Hugo van der Goes’
Portinari Altarpiece on Florentine painting of the late fifteenth century,
Memling’s role in the development of Florentine portraiture and the landscape "alla
fiamminga," and the theoretical basis for the appeal of Flemish painting to
Quattrocento painters and patrons in Florence.
Students may choose topics that focus on Italian influence on northern painting,
manuscript illumination, or printmaking as well as northern European influence
in Italy, such as the influence of Trecento painting and sculpture on Jean
pucelle, collections of Flemish paintings in Italy, Italian painters who trained
in Flanders, the impact of northern European prints in Italy, Italian influences
on Durer’s paintings and prints, and Durer’s impact in Italy.
Students are expected to have a basic knowledge of both Italian and northern
Renaissance painting and graphics. Five (5)
auditors allowed.
Preliminary Readings:
Christiansen, Keith. The View from Italy." In From Van Evck to Bneael. Early
Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Musçuin of Art edited by Maryan W.
Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, New York, 39—61.
Nuttall, Paula. From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting.
1400-1500. New Raven and London, 2004.
Rohlmann, Michael. "Flanders and Italy, Flanders and Florence. Early
Netherlandish Painting in Italy and its particular Influence on Florentine Art:
An Overview." In Italy and the Low Countries—Artistic Relations. The Fifteenth
Century, Proceedings of the Symposium held at Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht,
14 March 1994, Florence, 1999, 39-67of the Sympos urn held at Museum Cathar
neconvent, Utrecht, 14 March 1994, Florence, 1999, 39—67.
C L. 80101 - Dante's Paradiso NYU: M, 3:30-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 4 credits, Prof. Freccero, [93508]
Information: italian.dept@nyu.edu
C L. 80102 - Arts of Eloquence in Medieval &
Renaissance Italy NYU: W, 3:30-6:15 p.m., Rm.
TBA, 4 credits, Prof. Cox, [93509]
Recent scholarship in medieval and early modern culture has
increasingly stressed the centrality of the study of rhetoric in these periods
and the range of its influence, not simply on literature but on everything from
art, music, and architecture to political thought.
This course serves as an introduction to medieval and early modern rhetoric in
Italy, conceived of broadly as a global art of persuasive discourse, spanning
both verbal and nonverbaluses. Information:
italian.dept@nyu.edu
ENGL. 82100 - Representative Bodies Early Modern England GC: T, 4:15-6:15
p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Pollard, [93031]
Conceptually, bodies changed dramatically in the period: the longstanding humoral model, inherited from the Greek physician Galen, was confronted with challenges from Vesalian anatomy, Paracelsan pharmacy, Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, and new illnesses and medicines introduced by international travel and trade. Amid all these changes, bodies on page and stage were dissected, dismembered, drugged, displayed, disciplined, adorned, painted, and ravished.
We will examine how different genres represent these and other bodily states, with attention to the body's relationship to the mind, the emotions, the environment, and literature itself. Readings will include tragedies (including The Duchess of Malfi, The Revenger's Tragedy, and Hamlet); comedies (including The Taming of the Shrew, Bartholomew Fair, and Volpone); and erotic epyllia (including Venus and Adonis and The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image); as well as selections from cookbooks and cosmetic manuals (such as Platt's Delights for Ladies), antitheatrical polemics (including Gosson's School of Abuses20 ), medical texts (such as Crooke's Mikrocosmographia, and Culpepper's A Directory for Midwives), and conduct books (including Brathwait, The English Gentlewoman).
Assignments will include a presentation, occasional brief written responses, and a final paper.
FREN. 83000 - The Making -- and Unmaking -- of Louis XIV GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m.,
Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Stanton, [93516] Course taught in English.
This course aims to examine various aspects of the making of Louis XIV first through l7th century theories of kingship (including the king’s two bodies), and his own memoirs.
We will also analyze the vast system of
representations and the cultural policies and institutions his monarchy created
to construct his image, including the Académie Française and Versailles. After
investigating his centralizing cultural, national and imperial policies, we will
consider the (im)possibility of his absolutism: thus we will look both at
elements of disciplining and punishing, including censorship, exile, the
Protestant holocaust, and le grand renfermement of women, as well as the signs
of discursive and political opposition to his reign and absolutistic tendencies
(in treatises, memoirs and correspondences, the nouvelle historique and satires
of the king’s sexual impotence.
Finally, we will consider the ambiguities and contradictions of
representations of kingship during the reign of Louis XIV (in Corneille and
Racine).
The 17th-century authors we will read include Bayle, Bodin,
Bossuet,Bouhours, Corneille, Félibien, Fénelon, La Fontaine, Louis XIV, Pascal,
Perrault, Racine, Retz, Saint-Simon, Scudéry, Sévigné and Villedieu.
The readings will be uploaded on e-reserve by August 15, except for the
following texts, which should be purchased: Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty
Million Frenchmen (NY: Vintage, 1966); and editions with numbered lines of
Corneille, Pulchérie and Racine, Iphigénie
In addition to close reading of the texts and class participation, work for the seminar will feature a 20-page research paper (including a thesis statement and an outline), and one class presentation. There will also be a final exam.
Please address all questions to domna stanton (
dstanton11212@aol.com)