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21H.311

The Renaissance, 1300-1600

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2004

Topics

  • Introduction: The History of Renaissance History
  • Geography, Demography, Global Trade, 1300-1600
  • The World of the Peasantry ca. 1300
  • The Black Death
  • The Discarded Image
  • The Beginnings of Humanism in Fourteenth-Century Italy
  • Petrarch
  • Civic Humanism in Early Fifteenth-Century Italy and Beyond
  • Art and Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
  • A Visit to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
  • Burgundy and Late Medieval Politics in the North
  • The New Monarchies and The Invasion of Italy
  • Politics Reinvented
  • Christian Humanism in the North
  • Martin Luther and the Protestant Challenge
  • The Age of Reformations
  • Sixteenth-Century Peasants I
  • Sixteenth-Century Peasants II
  • 1543: The Copernican Revolution
  • 1543: The Vesalian Revolution
  • Individual Consultations with Instructor
  • Portuguese Expansion
  • Spanish Exploration
  • Spanish Conquest
  • Conclusion: The Future of the Renaissance

Readings

  • Rice, Eugene, and Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1994. ISBN: 9780393963045. (RG)
    Required
  • Ross, James, and Mary McLaughlin. The Portable Renaissance Reader . New York, NY: Penguin, 1977. ISBN: 9780140150612. (RR)
    Required
  • Leroy-Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error . New York, NY: Vintage, 1979. ISBN: 9780394729640.
    Required
  • Petrarch, Francesco. The Secret . Edited by Carol Quillen. Boston, MA: Bedford/Saint Martin’s, 2003. ISBN: 9780312154387.
    Required
  • Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince . Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780192804266. A version of this text is available through Project Gutenberg . ↗
    Required
  • Davis, N. Z. The Return of Martin Guerre . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780674766907.
    Required
  • SES #: 2 · TOPICS: Geography, Demography, Global Trade, 1300-1600 · READINGS: Leroy-Ladurie. Montaillou. pp. 3-135.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 3 · TOPICS: The World of the Peasantry ca. 1300 · READINGS: Leroy-Ladurie. Montaillou. pp. 139-230.
    Reading assignment
  • Tuchman, Barbara. “‘This is the end of the world’: The Black Death.” In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century . New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1987. pp. 92-125.
    Listed reading
  • Boccaccio. Introduction to The Decameron. New York, NY: Signet Classics, 2002. pp. 49-68.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 5 · TOPICS: The Discarded Image · READINGS: RR. pp. 580-3.
    Reading assignment
  • Petrarch. The Secret. pp. 1-70, 149-58.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 7 · TOPICS: Petrarch · READINGS: Petrarch. The Secret . pp. 70-148.
    Reading assignment
  • Kohl, Benjamin G., and Ronald G. Witt, eds. “Introduction and Bruni’s Panegyric to the City of Florence.” In The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978, pp. 121-175. ISBN: 9780812277524.
    Listed reading
  • Simons, Pat. “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture.” History Workshop 25 (1988): 38-57.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 10 · TOPICS: A Visit to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University · READINGS: Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 1-27. ISBN: 9780192821447.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 11 · TOPICS: Burgundy and Late Medieval Politics in the North · READINGS: RR. pp. 185-202.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 13 · TOPICS: Politics Reinvented · READINGS: Machiavelli. The Prince. all.
    Reading assignment
  • Sowards, J. Kelley, ed. The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1968, pp. 45-141.
    Listed reading
  • Hillerbrand, Hans, ed. “Radical Reform Movements.” In The Reformation. 6th ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978, pp. 214-38.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 17 · TOPICS: Sixteenth-Century Peasants I · READINGS: Davis. The Return of Martin Guerre . pp. 1-61.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 18 · TOPICS: Sixteenth-Century Peasants II · READINGS: Davis. The Return of Martin Guerre . pp. 62-125.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 20 · TOPICS: 1543: The Vesalian Revolution · READINGS: RR. pp. 552-73.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 23 · TOPICS: Portuguese Expansion · READINGS: RG. pp. 32-38.
    Reading assignment
  • Burkholder, Mark A., and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. 4th ed., New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 42-59. ISBN: 9780195137026.
    Listed reading
  • Schwartz, Stuart B., ed. “The Siege and Fall of Tenochtitlan.” In Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999, pp. 182-213. ISBN: 9780312154080.
    Listed reading
Sources