CL2055 Saints & Sinners: Medieval And Renaissance

This course proposes a panorama of early modern poetry, prose, and drama in their European contexts, beginning with a lecture-discussion of the humanist ideal as represented in the life and writings of Petrarch, before moving on to those of Margery Kempe and Geoffrey Chaucer. This semester our focus will be the fortunes of three exemplary Italian genres from the Renaissance: (1) the proliferation of lyric forms (the origins of the sestina and the sonnet and the development of the sonnet sequence from Petrarch’s Rime onward); (2) the popularity of the novella tradition and pilgrimage narrative (with roots in classical narrative, medieval fabula, and early romance, as seen in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Kempe’s Book of Margery Kempe); and (3) the rise of drama.

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