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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : European Languages and Cultures - Italian

Undergraduate Course: Italian Baroque:Literature, Arts and Science (ELCI10029)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThe onset of postmodern culture has often been described as the 'return of the Baroque', and postmodernity as a 'neo-Baroque age'. If so, what was the Baroque, and why is it so relevant to understanding our present time? It has been argued that the Baroque was essentially an 'Italian phenomenon', but its style had a deep and wide influence beyond Europe. In a time of cultural and cosmological revolutions, the Baroque marked the beginning of modernity with a new vision of the connections between arts and science, while challenging the 'great divide' between high and popular culture. From this interdisciplinary perspective, the course will tackle the history and meaning of the Baroque style in literature, arts, and science between the modern and the postmodern age.
Course description What is Baroque and why is it so relevant to our time? Authors covered include Omar Calabrese and Frank Zappa, Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei, Giambattista Marino and Giambattista Basile, Torquato Tasso and Claudio Monteverdi, Roberto Longhi and Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Anna Banti and Artemisia Gentileschi.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Students will examine what is Baroque and why it is so relevant to our time.
  2. Students will examine some of the connections between modern and postmodern age, while challenging the 'great divide' between high and popular culture.
  3. Students will tackle the meaning of the Baroque style by looking at Bruno's infinite universe and the making of modern science with Galileo.
  4. Students will also examine Marino's poetics of the marvellous and Basile's invention of the fairy tale, the birth of opera with Monteverdi and the passionate realism of Caravaggio and Artemisia.
Reading List
Primary Reading:
Brigid Brophy, Baroque-n-Roll, in Baroque-'n'-Roll and Other Essays (London: Hamish, 1987), pp. 137-72.
Erwin Panofsky, What is Baroque?, in Three Essays on Style (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 17-89.
Giordano Bruno, De gl heroici furori (1585), I.4, II.3.
Giambattista Marino, Adone (1623), Canto V (120-51).
Galileo Galilei, La favola del suono, from Il saggiatore (1623), in Opere, ed. by F. Brunetti, 2 vols (Torino: UTET, 2005), I, 692-94.
Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata (1581), Canto XII (48-70).
Giambattista Basile, La gatta cenerentola, in Lo cunto de li cunti, overo Lo trattenemiento de peccerille (1634), I.6.
Federico Della Valle, Iudit (1627), Prologo, III.4-5, IV.4, IV.7, V.2-3.
Roberto Longhi, Dialogo fra il Caravaggio e il Tiepolo, Paragone Arte, 23 (1951): 57-64.
Anna Banti, Artemisia (Milano: Bompiani, 1947).

Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsDELC Baroque
Contacts
Course organiserProf Davide Messina
Tel:
Email: D.Messina@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Fiona Jack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3635
Email: f.jack@ed.ac.uk
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