Introductory description

This module aims to provide an exploration of key figures and topics within Renaissance cultural and intellectual history, usually starting with Italy but developing in a pan-European context. Topics vary every year. In the past, we have explored personalities such as Machiavelli, writings on utopias, discussions on power and resistance, or particular disciplinary fields in the Italian and European Renaissance (such as science and medicine; philosophy).

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Module structure (in term 1 or 2 —according to that year's module list).
Topics in Renaissance Italy is available in three formats; only one format will run
each year.

Topic 1: Machiavelli and Renaissance Political Thought (Term 2, 2021-22)
Wk 1: Introduction to 16C Italy
Wk 2: The background of Renaissance political thought (I)
We 3: The background of Renaissance political thought (II)
Wk 4: Machiavelli as political thinker: The Prince
Wk 5: Machiavelli and The Prince (cont'd)
Wk 6: Reading Week
Wk 7: Machiavelli as political thinker: the Discourses on Livy
Wk 8: Machiavelli as political thinker: the Discourses on Livy (cont'd)
Wk 9: Machiavelli and history: the History of Florence
Wk 10: Machiavelli and history: the History of Florence (cont'd)

Topic 2: Renaissance Science and Medicine
Wk 1: The landscape of learning
Wk 2: The influence of the past: Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy
Wk 3: Natural philosophy: the study of animals and plants in Ulisse Aldrovandi
Wk 4: Natural philosophy: physics and motion in Galileo
Wk 5: Natural philosophy: cosmology in Galileo
Wk 1: Reading week
Wk 6: Renaissance mathematics and Galileo
Wk 7: Renaissance medicine: theory and practice in Bologna and Padua
Wk 8: Renaissance medicine: theory and practice in Bologna and Padua
Wk 9: The role of astrology, alchemy and 'pseudo-science'

Topic 3: Italian and European Thought in the Renaissance
Wk 1: Petrarch, humanism and letters
Wk 2: Petrarch, the Secret
Wk 3: Leon Battista Alberti, I libri della famiglia
Wk 4: Lorenzo Valla, De vero falsoque bono
Wk 5: Ficino, De religione
Wk 2: Reading week
Wk 6: Machiavelli, The Prince
Wk. 8: Erasmus, selections from his Colloquies
Wk 9: Thomas More, Utopia
Wk 10: Montaigne, the Essais

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Use knowledge acquired in lectures, seminars and from prescribed reading as a basis for individual research
• Demonstrate relevant factual knowledge about the Italian Renaissance, and contexts and issues under discussion and demonstrate
• understanding of the texts at a thematic as well as linguistic and stylistic level
• Successfully communicate what they have learnt both orally and in writing.
• Critically analyse the texts and engage where appropriate with scholarly debates surrounding the extract texts and cultural issues studied
• Develop IT skills

Indicative reading list

Reading List:
Topic 1: Machiavelli
The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Political Thought, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge, 2008).
Francesco Bausi, Machiavelli (Salerno, 2005).
Davide Canfora, Prima di Machiavelli: Politica e cultura in eta umanistica (Laterza, 2005).
Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978).
Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth- Century Florence (Norton, 1984).
Roberto Ridolfi, Studi sulle commedie del Machiavelli (Nistri-Lischi, 1968).
James Hankins, Virtue Politics (Harvard University Press, 2020)

Topic 2: Science and Medicine
Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (University of Chicago,1978).
Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (University of Chicago, 2006).
Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi (MIT, 1999).
Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (University of California, 1994).
Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton, 1997).
Nancy Siraisi, Medicine in the Italian Universities, 1275-1600 (Brill, 2001).
Paul Lawrence Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics (Droz, 1975).

Topic 3: Italian and European Thought
Jill Kraye, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (1996).
Brian Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford, 1992).
Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge,1978).
Marcia Colish MedievalFoundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition (Yale,1997).
James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Brill, 1991).
Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Brill, 2000).

Research element

Independent reading and the writing of an essay will depend on and develop skills in research.

Interdisciplinary

Interaction between historical, linguistic, literary, and philosophical elements.

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Italian culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of Renaissance culture & thought will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with cultural products and the context(s) in which they developed. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.