Bruno/Campanella

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course analyzes the philosophy and theology of Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella, two crucial figures of European sixteenth-century culture. As philosophers, theologians, poets, and narrators, Bruno and Campanella embody the literary, religions, and philosophical syncretism of the Italian Renaissance. To study these authors necessarily entails a close analysis of Florentine Neo-Platonism, Hermetism, magic, and apocalyptism, along with the literary traditions that molded the Italian renaissance. We discuss Bruno's Italian Dialogues, De umbris idearum (his first major treatise on artificial memory), and a selection of his later Latin poems. We then examine Campanella's La Città del sole, most of his philosophical poems, De Antichristo, and a selection of his theological treatises.