For the Love of Knowledge: Cosmos, Body & Soul in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature & Art

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

As Dante Alighieri writes at the beginning of the Convivio, “all men [and women] by nature desire to know.” This 3-credit course, taught in Italian, explores how Medieval and Renaissance Italian artists, poets, and intellectuals engaged with the problem of knowledge and its objects. What is the cosmos, and how does it function? What is the place of our world within it? How do we measure and understand our surroundings? What is the relationship between human beings and the universe, between body and mind, and what is the soul? Disciplines such as cosmology, astronomy, geography, philosophy, and theology emerged as ways of acquiring and organizing knowledge about ourselves and the world. At the same time, poetry and the visual arts gave voice to—and preserved—the history of new discoveries and ideas. From Dante, Boccaccio, and Giotto to Alberti, Isotta Nogarola and Moderata Fonte, from Campanella to Bruno and Galileo; from Botticelli and Leonardo to Raphael, Michelangelo, Plautilla Bricci and Guercino, we will examine texts and works of art that place knowledge and its transmission at their center. Students will engage in discussions on the nature of knowledge and the desire to know, consider the classification of different fields of study, and explore diverse modes and contexts of learning. The course also addresses the role of gender in the pursuit of knowledge and the relationship between vernacular language and Latin in shaping how knowledge was categorized, communicated, and transmitted in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.