Sacred and Profane Love in Florentine Literature and Art

3 credits · Undergraduate

Beginning with Dante and Beatrice and all the way to the Grand Tour that led countless British Romantic writers to travel there, Florence is known worldwide as the city of Art and Love. Was modern romantic love, in its extreme individualism, and in contrast with marriage and other institutions, truly invented in medieval courts? Is the tension between sacred and profane, sex and transcendence, activism and retreat - already evoked by Dante in his Commedia - inherent to modern love? How does it transform through time? This course considers works from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and into the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on how love thrives on the contrast between pleasure and salvation. Particular attention will be given to the interplay between male and female perspectives. Field trips will take us to locations in Florence connected to the writers we are reading.