COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
FALL 2003
RSCP 72100: Early Modern Print Culture: The Dissemination of Writing and the Varieties of Authorial Personae, GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3/4 credits, Prof. Elsky, [45233] Cross listed with C L 80900, & ENGL 71000
This course will focus on manuscript and print as co-existing early modern technologies of reproduction. It will include scholarly and critical approaches from a variety of disciplines: history, literature, and art history. It will emphasize the effect of the mechanization of word and image on the social identity of those who produced them.
Topics of reading and discussion will include: the impact of print on the prose of Renaissance humanists, and the emergence of the intellectual as a figure of authority; the interplay of manuscript and print in the composition and dissemination of lyric poetry, and the rise of the literary author; the transformation of the Renaissance pictorial print into art, and the advent of the printmaker as artist. We will end with a glance at communities of readers in the age of print, with emphasis on differences between print and manuscript communities.
Requirements: oral report, and two shorter or one longer paper.
RSCP. 83100 - (Un)Classical Bodies, GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Stanton, [45211] Course taught in English. Cross listed with FREN 73000
This course will examine diverse and dissimilar constructions of the body in seventeenth-century France - a subject silenced by the traditional and post-structuralist privileging of the "classical."
We will begin by examining recent theories of the early-modern body in Bakhtin, Elias, Lacqueur, Bordo and Reiss, but most notably (and influentially) in Foucault and his notion of "the classical" and disciplined body. These readings will inform our discussion of different - and potentially contradictory - discourses imbricated in the production of early-modern bodies over and beyond the Cartesian body: the medical (anatomical), sexual, reproductive, perverse and grotesque body; the social, civilized, courtly (honnête) body; the cross-dressed body; the rhetoric of the face and the portrait; the king’s bodies; and the religious and mystical (ecstatic) body.
Authors to be read include: Bourgeois, Chorier, De Grenailles, Descartes, Duval, Faret, Foigny, Guyon, Héroard, La Fontaine, La Rochefoucault, MoliPre, Montpensier, Paré, Pascal, Poulain de la Barre, Saint-Simon and Venette. We will also visit the collections of anatomical drawings at the New York Public Library. Class discussions will be conducted in English; readings will be in French.
Work for the course will include a 15 page paper and an oral presentation. A prior knowledge of seventeenth-century French literature and culture is recommended, but not required. Address questions about the content and work of the course to Domna Stanton (dstanton112@aol.com).
ART. 72100 - Velazquez, GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 3416, 3 credits, Prof. Vergara, [45693]
The paintings and career of Velázquez provide the touchstones of this course. "Making" refers to the material and formal constituents of Velázquez’s paintings--i.e., to the very basis of their imagery and metaphors. "Discourse"--here limited primarily to 17th-c. writings on art from Spain, Italy and The Netherlands; highly influential passages on painting from Pliny’s Natural History (1st c. CE); and pictorial discourse discernable in selected paintings by other 17th-c. practitioners--will provide an important interpretative tool, and will also help historicize the phenomena that inspired comments from that of painter Luca Giordano, on Las Meninas: "this is the theology of painting" (ca. 1692) to Manet’s "Velázquez is the greatest painter there ever was," and beyond.
Recurring themes include: forms of artistic self-definition and self-reflection; career strategies; interdependencies of patronage andart; the value placed on virtuosity, and some characteristically Baroque notions of this; concepts of nature and the naturalistic; and the intense awareness of recognizable visual languages (styles, manners) as essential components of artistic intelligibility.
Students will be provided with a list of promising, manageable paper topics from which to choose, each with an accompanying bibliography; they may also submit topics for approval. Auditors permitted.
ART. 82000 - Duccio to Holbein: Interaction between Italian & Northern European Renaissance Art, GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3416, 0-12 credits, Prof. Lane, [45700]
A seminar dealing with the interchange of ideas north and south of the alps from 1300 to 1550 in painting, manuscript illumination, and printmaking.
Among the problems to be considered are the influence of Trecento painting and sculpture on Jean Pucelle, the parallels between the paintings of Jan van Eyck and Masaccio, Flemish influences on Filippo Lippi, Italian patronage of Flemish painting, Flemish painters in Italy and Italian artists training in the Netherlands, collections of Flemish paintings in Italy, 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," the reasons for the appeal of Flemish painting to Quattrocento painters and patrons, the impact of Schongauer’s prints in Italy, and Italian influences on Dürer’s paintings and prints.
Five auditors will be permitted with the understanding that they have to come to all of the classes, including the ones devoted to student presentations.
ENGL. 81400 - Tragicomedy in Shakespeare & His Contemporaries, GC: W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Di Gangi, [45247]
A notoriously elusive genre, "tragicomedy" was used in the Renaissance to describe plays ranging from pastoral romances to courtly satires: the title page of Jonson's 1616 Works places the figure of Tragicomedia between those of the Pastor and the Satyr.
To further complicate the issue, the label of tragicomedy has served to distinguish Shakespeare's late plays (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest) from his earlier comedies, "problem comedies," and tragedies; however, critics have preferred to categorize the late plays as "romances" in order to distinguish them from what they regard as the more conventional "tragicomedies" of Beaumont and Fletcher.
In any case, neither "tragicomedy" nor "romance" appears as a generic category in the 1623 Folio, which places The Winter's Tale and The Tempest among the Comedies, Cymbeline among the Tragedies, and omits Pericles altogether.
In this course, we will focus on the many forms that "tragicomedy" could take in seventeenth-century English theater. We will begin by considering attempts to define the genre by Renaissance writers-Sidney, Guarini, Fletcher-and by contemporary critics. We will identify the predominant formal and ideological concerns of tragicomedy by organizing the plays under the following rubrics: Pastoral Transformations; Nationalism and the Family; Exploration and Colonialism; Gender, Sexuality, and Social Order.
However, a historicized approach to the construction of gender, sexual, and political ideologies in early modern England will inform our discussion of the plays and the criticism throughout the semester.
We will read Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess and The Island Princess; Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and A King and No King; Fletcher and Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen; Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Pericles, and The Tempest; Webster's The Devil's Law Case; Middleton's The Witch; Ford, Dekker, and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton; and Ford's The Lover's Melancholy.
Requirements include one (20-25 pp.) research paper, three brief response papers, and a class presentation.
HIST. 70500 - Magic, Craft. and Nature in the Renaissance GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Siraisi, [45121]
An exploration of some Renaissance approaches to understanding, controlling, observing, and manipulating the natural world.
Most of the course will be focused on the period approximately 1450-1600, with some attention to earlier background. We will read and discuss both selected primary sources in English translation and some examples of the copious recent scholarly literature.
Requirements: short response papers, one 7-10 pp. paper, and short oral presentations.
HIST. 80500 - The Literature of Early Modern European History, Part One: 1300-1600, GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 5 credits, Prof. King, [45117]
Introduction to major topics in early modern European history, including intellectual, cultural, social, political, and economic approaches.
Topics include urbanization; humanism; the society and culture of the Italian Renaissance; Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Erasmus; the northern Renaissance; the Protestant and Catholic reformations; exploration and encounter; sixteenth-century economy and society; nation states, war, and politics; women, learning, and the witchhunt.
Students will generally read one monograph in common and one personally-chosen monograph each week, and will write ten brief abstracts and a take-home exam. Grading:
Class participation:
20%
10 comparative abstracts: 70% (7% each)
Take-home final exam:
10%.
Syllabus, common readings, and reading list available in Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
MUS. 76001 - Topics in the Renaissance, GC: M, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2 credits, Prof. DeFord, [45123] Co-requisite: MUS 81202 Performance Workshop-Renaissance
MUS. 81202 - Perf Workshop: Renaissance, GC: M, 4:30-6:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2 credits, Prof. Stone, [45124]
SPAN. 71300 - La Celestina, GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Di Camillo, [45207]
This course is designed as a collective effort aimed at examining major textual problems of La Celestina. It deals primarily with questions relating to the early stages of the textual tradition of the Comedia in its manuscript and printed form: from the manuscript fragment to the early versions in 16 acts to the Tragicomedia in 21 acts.
Focusing on the most significant additions, interpolations and substitutions we will consider the role that printers, correctors, booksellers and the reading public played in the evolution of this most puzzling text. Attention will also be paid to the genesis of the work and to the problem of multiple authorship, exploring, at the same time, some of the ramifications implicit in these issues. Through a close analysis of the variants and of the nature of the errors, we will review the stemmas already proposed and try to restore, whenever possible, the correct reading of the text.
As a supplement to the philological praxis of the neo-Lachmannean method that only deals with single textual problems, we will strive to relate the individual lectio to the entire work. To this end, emphasis will be placed on documentary evidence (humanist comedies, letters, treatises) as possible sources for resolving specific textual corruptions and unexplained obscure readings.
Text to be used in the course: Fernando de Rojas, Comedia o Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, ed. P. Russell, Madrid: Castalia.Supplementary edition to be consulted in class:Fernando de Rojas ( y "Antiguo Autor"). La Celestina. Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Edición y estudio de F. J. Lobera y G. Serés, P. Díaz-Mas, C. Mota, I. Ruiz Aralluz, y F, Rico. Barcelona: Crítica, 2000.
Photocopies and facsimile editions of the manuscript fragment and incunabula will be made available to the class. P. Botta, Edizione critica della Cerlestina di Fernando de Rojas (dall’Atto VIII alla Fine); FacoltB di Lettere, UniversitB di. Roma "La Sapienza"; Celestina. Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Fernado de Rojas. Introducción y edición crítica de Miguel Marciales, al cuidado de B. utton y J. Snow. University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago, 1985, 2 vols.