COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

SPRING 2003

RSCP 83100 - Studies in Theatre: Performing the Renaissance: Theatre and Theatricality in Art and Society. GC: M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. James Saslow [55119] Cross listed with THEA 72599 & ART 81500

"All the world's a stage" wrote Shakespeare, and all the arts of the early modern era were profoundly imbued with metaphors, images, and techniques of the theatre.

This lecture course will examine the interrelations between the performing and visual arts from ca. 1300-1750, when dramatic performance and the buildings to house it developed the forms we know today. In tandem with literature and architecture, painting, sculpture, and graphic art explored theatricality through naturalistic narratives that aimed to involve the viewer as if they were dramas, with the picture frame assuming the same role as the proscenium.

From sacred drama performed in or around churches like Giotto's Arena Chapel, through the court masques and operas of the Baroque, to the emerging commercial popular theatre of Hogarth's London, this course ranges in scope from literal to metaphorical: from theatre "proper" (spaces dedicated to performance) to the ephemeral art of festival and pageant, to architecture and decoration that aimed to theatricalize other activities, and to theatricality as subject matter and metaphor in the visual arts.

In addition to providing a chronological overview, the course will emphasize several broad interdisciplinary themes: secularization, patronage, political uses of theatrical self-display, and theatre as material culture (the intersection of art and technology). While designed to meet the needs of students in Theatre, Art History, and Renaissance Studies, the course will also cut across these fields: for however academia may categorize them today, in Renaissance culture the art of theatre and the theatricality of art were inextricable.

RSCP. 83100 - The New Cosmology GC: W, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Purnell, [55828] Cross listed with PHIL. 76400

During the most productive years of his career, Galileo Galilei insisted on identifying himself as a philosopher and not merely a mathematician or astronomer. This seminar will focus on the central role Galileo's research and writing played in the transformation of cosmological theory and practice from the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian model prevalent in his student days to a heliocentric view grounded in a mathematized physics applicable to both terrestrial and celestial phenomena.

We will consider the principal philosophical influences on his work: thinkers such as Bernardino Telesio, Francesco Patrizi of Cherso, Giordano Bruno and Galileo's own mentor, Jacopo Mazzoni. A close reading of a selection of Galileo's own works will be followed by an analysis of their influence on the next generation of philosopher-cosmologists, including Newton, Descartes and Leibniz. A major focus will be to underscore the central role that science played in the emergence of modern philosophy and to validate Galileo's claim to a major place in the history of our discipline.

ART. 72100 - Caravaggio/International Caravaggism. GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Slatkes, [55289]

This lecture course will deal with the life and work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, his most important followers, and the spread of his influence in Italy and transalpine Europe. Stress will be placed on the growing problem of attribution and second versions.

Lectures will also deal with the development and nature of the thematic elements of Caravaggism (genre, still life, altarpieces, history and religious subjects), as well as the makeup of the international caravaggesque community in Rome that both transformed and spread Caravaggio's revolutionary innovations.

Among the other artists to be discussed are Bartolomeo Manfredi, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Valentin, Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen in Rome. The course requirements include a research paper and a final exam. Auditors permitted.

ART. 81300 - European Art/Architecture :15C Fresco Cycles GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Adams, [55302]

In this course we explore the major fresco cycles of 15th century Italy. Beginning with Giotto's Arena Chapel by way of introduction, the course considers such cycles as Masaccio's Life of St. Peter in the Brancacci Chapel, the Famous Men and Women by Castagno, Piero's True Cross Cycle in Arezzo, Benozzo Gozzoli's Adoration of the Magi in the Medici Palace, Filippo Lippi's Prato cycle, and others. Students will be asked to consider iconography, environment and context, and style when they give their reports. A final paper is due at the end of the semester. No auditors allowed.

ART. 81300 - European Art/Architecture: Bronzino1300-1750 GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Cox-Rearick, [55301]

The art of Agnolo Bronzino, one of the major exponents of the late Renaissance style in painting, sculpture, and architecture known as Mannerism (ca. 1520-70). Bronzino dominated Florentine painting during its second phase known as the Maniera--or, as the Italians call it, la bella maniera. His paintings of sacred and secular works for his major patron Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, and for other Florentine aristocrats, will be the focus of the seminar. His drawing oeuvre and tapestries will also be studied, and his prolific activity as a poet will be considered.

Two major portraits and an important drawing of his are in New York museums or collections and will be studied. The seminar has a "research methods" component, using Bronzino's works as its material but useful for work on any topic in Renaissance art.

Sessions will be documentation and primary sources, connoisseurship (attribution and dating), iconography, historical style context (Mannerim and Maniera), writing a catalogue entry, etc. Reccomended prerequisite: a survey course in Italian High and Late Renaissance art, such as Hunter's AH 624, CUNY courses such as Prof. Saslow's in Fall 2002 or Prof. Cox-Rearick's Mannerism seminar in Spring 2001 (or the equivalent from other schools).

Reading knowledge of Italian is desirable but not required. Course requirements: several brief reports on topics treated in the first half of the term; an oral report (length depending on class enrollment) during the last 2 weeks of the term. The written version of this report (with notes and bibliography) is the final paper. Auditors by permission of instructor.

C L. 72000 - Poetry/Poetics/Authority in Baroque GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Fasoli, [55315]

This course will study the works of the principal poets, dramatists, literary theoreticians and polemists of XVII century Italy. Particular attention will be paid to the influence of Italian writers on English authors like Milton, Crashaw, and Pope.

Since not all the works to be considered have been translated into English, students will have personalized reading lists, according to their command of a foreign language (many Italian texts not available in English can be read in Spanish or French translations).

We will examine the works of poets (Marino, Chiabrera, Rinuccini, Testi, etc); those of "Natural History" philosophers (Galileo, Magalotti, Redi); and the treatises written by intellectuals that, anachronistically, we can today label as "literary theorists" (Tassoni, Sforza Pallavicino, Pellegrini, Tesauro)

Italian historians and literary scholars from the end of the XVII century to World War II have mostly viewed the Age of Baroque, the Italian "Seicento," as an age of decadence governed by the rules of bad taste, exaggeration and Counter-Reformation aesthetics and propaganda. But, however, and fortunately, in the last decades, a new school of thought have emerged amidst what has been called the "Crisis of Reason," or the breaking down of the all-encompassing ideological narratives and frameworks (Hegelian, Marxist, Historicist) which were hegemonic in Western thought for a long time.

In the last fifty years, scholars of differnt countries and cultures (from Getto to Genette, from Rousset to Deleuze, from Morpurgo to Maraval, from Pozzi to Fumaroli) have looked at the Age of Baroque as time of profound innovation if not revolution. Italian writers of the Age of baroque, like Alessandro Tassoni, have been reconsiderd as pioneer fighters in what would later become known as the Querelle des anciens et des modernes. Some Italian writers actually managed to destroy the Aristotelian Principle of Authority, and the cult of classicism, working from within, operating in what was considered to be the official literary system whilst underminig its foundations. No other words can describe better this profound dichotomy between the Old and the New than the title of Accetto's theoretical book: The Aristotelian Telescope. A "telescope," the very instrument that Galileo and others had used to undo Aristotelian physics and cosmology. But still, an "Aristotelian" one.

C L. 80700 - Medieval & Renaissance Paleography GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 4 credits, Prof. Coleman, [55321] Cross listed with MSCP 80700

A survey of western handwriting from the late Roman period until the invention of the printing press. The course will also study the materials used in book production (wax, papyrus, parchment, paper) and the forms of the book (roll, codex). The course will consist of weekly transcription exercises, organized in historical sequence, with classroom discussion about the development anD characteristics of each hand. In addition, students in the course will work on a hand (e.g. carolingian, gothic, secretary), area (e.g. France, England, Italy), or a time-period of their choice in order to begin to develop a specialization for future work.

Although the course will survey all major historical hands, the course itself will emphasize certain areas of study (e.g. literary hands, notarial hands, university bookhands) depending on the particular interests of the students in the class. Besides studying manuscripts in facsimile, the students will also be able to have occasional access to manuscript materials at the New York Public Library.

Texts: Leonard E. Boyle. Medieval Latin Paleography, A Bibliographical Introduction. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1984. Michelle P. Brown. A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1999. Barbara A. Shailor. The Medieval Book. Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 28.Toronto: U Toronto P, 1994.

ENGL. 78100 - Queering the Renaissance GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Hayes, [55259]

Although Michel Foucault points out in his History of Sexuality that there was no such thing as "a homosexual" until 1870 when the practice of sodomy "was transposed onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul" (43), same-sex desire is evident in many texts produced in 17^th- and 17^th century England. Starting with Marlowe's Edward II and continuing with Shakespeare's Richard II and The Sonnets we will discuss examples of same-sex desire that precede modern definitions of homosexuality and heterosexuality.

We will also discuss examples of "queer" erotic discourse such as George Herbert's poem about nursing at Christ's breast, Richard Crasaw's poem about Mary sucking Christ's bloody teat, John Davies's celebration of Christ's tormented body and Lady Eleanor Davies's references to King James's relationship with the Duke of Buckingham whom he called "his sweet child and wife, that give voice to desires that, outside the sphere of sacred rapture, would be seen as tasteless if not blasphemous.

Abezier Coppe, a Ranter who refused compliance with monogamous marriage, wrote about his relationship with "Filthy blinde Sodomites called Angel's men" and told of his joy in "Filthy blinde Sodomites called Angel's men" and told of his joy in "clipping, hugging, embracing, and kissing a poor deformed wretch." Aphra Behn, who often dressed as a man, wrote in the epilogue to her play The Widow Ranter: "Men are but bunglers, when they would express/ The sweets of love, the dying tenderness;/ But women, by their own abundance, measure,/ And when they write, have deeper sense of pleasure of pleasure." In another play by a woman, Margaret Cavendish's The Female Academy, the central misogynistic trope of Jonson's Epicoene is re-appropriated.

We will read the following primary texts: Christopher Marlowe, Edward II William Shakespeare, The Sonnets, Richard II Poems by George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Davies, and Henry Vaughan , Abezier Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll, Laurence Clarkson, The Lost Sheep Found, and A Single Bye, Eleanor Davies, Prophecies Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone Aphra Behn, The Widow Ranter, The Rover Ben Johnson, Epicoene Margaret Cavendish, The Female Academy We will also read selection from such secondary texts as: Alison Findlay, and others Women and Dramatic Production 1550-1700. Longman's 2000. Richard Rambuss, Closet Devotions. Duke, 1998 Jonathan Goldberg, ed., Queering the Renaissance. Duke, 1994. Bruce Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England. Chicago, paperback edn. 1993. Auditors are allowed.

ENGL. 82300 - Milton Matters GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Wittreich, [55279]

Let's start this seminar with what readers can agree upon: Milton matters. Yet differences arise-and sometimes become disagreeable disputes-the moment we ask why Milton matters, and then entwine the theoretical gambit, "Who Reads What How?"

For some, Milton remains a monument to dead ideas and, as such, a reliable index to the starched theology and retrograde politics, including sexual politics, of his own era. Milton's excellence, apparently, is his relevance to the seventeenth century and irrelevance to our own, with Milton then depicted as a poet who embraces the very values that, having outgrown, we now abhor.

Yet there are other voices in this conversation, which speak of double readings, of resistant readings and of subversive texts, of counterspeech. These are the voices that capture the enlarged consciousness of the poet who, once composing Samson Agonistes, encased it within the interpreting context of Paradise Regain'd. We will begin and end this seminar with the last of Milton's major poems, Samson Agonistes, which conveniently (for us) is being performed in New York the first and second Sundays of February.

We will dwell on the 1671 poetic volume in which Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes are paired-a volume which is both the completion and climax of Milton's poetic vision. Yet we will also trace the changing mind of Milton from Lycidas (and the poetic volume in which it was first published, Justa Edovardo King Naufrago), through the political tracts by which Milton was best known in his own time, to the poems published together in 1671, asking ourselves along the way and in different contexts whether Milton's writings subtend or subvert the culture of violence out of which they emerge.

REQUIIREMENTS: an oral presentation and a final paper of 20 to 25 pages.

TEXTS: Justa Edovardo King Naufrago and Christos Paschon (provided by the seminar leader); John Milton: Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis, Cambridge University Press paperback; Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, Longman paperback; Altering Eyes: New Perspectives on "Samson Agonistes," ed. Mark R. Kelley and Joseph Wittreich (University of Delaware Press and Associated University Presses).

FREN. 72000 - Rabelais et l'humanisme en Fr GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Renner, [55695]

Nous voudrons explorer les courants politiques, intellectuels et religieux de la première moitié du seizième siècle à travers l'œuvre de François Rabelais. Les quatre livres authentiques seront au centre de nos préoccupations et serviront d'illustration de ce qu'on appelle fréquemment la "Grande Renaissance". Parmi les humanistes contemporains, nous nous intéresserons à Budé, Castiglione et Machiavelli, mais surtout à Erasme que Rabelais considérait comme son père et sa mère. De surcroît, nous étudierons un nombre d'approches critiques modernes qui nous aideront à cerner les enjeux de cette littérature engagée et parfois difficile et qui ne manqueront de faire surgir des questions pertinentes pour nos discussions. Il est important que tous les étudiants se servent des éditions indiquées ci-dessous pour faciliter le travail en cours. Il y aura aussi une collection de documents photocopiés qui inclue un choix représentatif d'articles théoriques et critiques. Chaque étudiant présentera un exposé oral de 20 minutes et écrira deux dissertations (de 5 à 8 pages à la mi-semestre et de 12 à 15 pages à la fin du semestre). Les sujets respectifs seront à déterminer au cours du semestre.Textes: L'édition récente des quatre premiers livres (Pantagruel, Gargantua, Le Tiers Livre, Le Quart Livre) parue chez "Le livre de poche", éds. Gérard Defaux et Jean Céard, Paris, 1994-95.

HIST. 80900 - Literature of Early Modern European History 1550-1800 GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 5 credits, Prof. Rosenblatt, [55540]

This course will emphasize the critical reading and discussion of important, path-breaking books in the field of early modern European history. The following topics will be covered: 1) The English Revolutions 2) Absolutism/Enlightened Despotism 3) The History of Science 4) Economy and Society 5) War, Violence and the State 6) Women, Sex and the Family 7) The Enlightenment 8) The Political Culture of the Old Regime and 9) The French Revolution.

Students will be expected to read the assigned weekly texts, to write short abstracts on these texts, and to participate actively in class discussions. The course is intended to help prepare first year students for their written exam.

SPAN. 71100 - Libro de buen amor GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Di Camillo, [55392]

For further information, contact the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures, 212/187-8410

THEA. 85400 - Renaissance Drama GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Carlson, [55069]

This course will study the development of Renaissance drama in Europe, beginning with the first Italian vernacular comedies such as Bibbiena's La Calandria and Machiavelli's The Mandrake, Cinthio's tragedy Orbecche and Guarini's pastoral The Faithful Shepherd.

The spread of Renaissance dramatic ideas will then be traced across Europe in the work of Jodelle in France, Rebhun in Germany, Lope de Rueda in Spain, and Heywood and Udall in England.

Finally, the course will consider the full flowering of Renaissance drama in England and Spain, including work by Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe, Lope de Vega, Tirso da Molina, and Calderon.