Module Description: 

 

Dante’s Vita nova and Petrarch’s Canzoniere give two compelling accounts of the experience of falling, and remaining, in love. Each work provides an intimate, apparently sincere self-portrait of a lover’s sentimental journey; but each is also overtly artificial, self-conscious, and highly literary. The module explores the literary strategies that the two writers use to engage their audiences with the persona of a lover who is also a writer recording every nuance of the love experience. It offers the opportunity for in-depth study of short works by two of the most famous Italian poets of any age, situating them within a historical, cultural and theoretical context. 

 

In the Vita nova (New Life), Dante’s short narrative uses a mixture of prose and poetry to tell the story of his youthful devotion to his beloved Beatrice: a love that survived rejection, illness and death, culminating in a transcendent vision that possibly inspired the Commedia. In the Canzoniere (Songbook), Petrarch’s 366 short poems use a poem-a-day to portray a restless lover, unable to decide whether the Laura he thinks about obsessively is angelic or demonic in her influence over his feelings. (We look closely at about 35 of the poems, predominantly sonnets.) The module explores how these two works engage with medieval notions of love, ethics and religion, transcendence and mortality. It reviews how writers now regarded as canonical worked at the literary and linguistic avant-garde in their own time, challenging expectations in the surrounding culture about who could become a writer, what they could say, and what forms and language could be used for literary expression. Dante’s Vita nova and Petrarch’s Canzoniere also provide substantial material for discussing questions relating to autobiography, identity, memory, authorship and authority. 

 

Teaching combines informal lectures and seminar-style discussion, including small-group work to encourage active learning. Weekly preparation tasks will focus on close readings of selected passages from the set texts, completion of assigned secondary readings, and preparing seminar discussion questions that relate to the assessed essays. You may be asked to prepare a short (non-assessed) oral presentation in class as a basis for class discussion. 

 

Aims and Learning Outcomes: 

 

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:  

 


	Engage with and analyse material from the two set texts, showing informed understanding of key themes and literary techniques.  
	
 


	Identify and analyse Italian lyric poetry in relation to form and structure, and to discuss representative themes in relation to medieval European cultural concerns.  
	
 


	Present and analyse debates in criticism of Dante and Petrarch’s texts, and evaluate critical approaches to the texts studied.  
	
 


	Write concise textual analysis of selected primary source passages, demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the original Italian text.  
	
 


	Produce written work that develops and defends sound arguments, and displays critical thinking and research skills.  
	
 


	Manage preparation tasks and meet specified deadlines in presenting work both in oral discussion and in written assignments 
	
 

Suggested Reading: 

In preparation for the module, we advise reading the two set texts, available in reasonably priced paperback or online. Copies can be found in the UCL Library. If you are buying a copy for personal use, you are strongly recommended to use a dual-language or Italian-only version, as class discussion focuses on the Italian texts in the original: 

 

1. Dante Alighieri: Vita nuova or Vita nova (either spelling): read the complete text.  

Good English translations include those by Barbara Reynolds (Penguin) or Anthony Mortimer (Alma Classics). Good Italian-only editions include those by Stefano Carrai (BUR), or Manuela Colombo (Feltrinelli). 

 

2. Petrarch: Canzoniere (also known as Rime sparse or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta): read at least 20 poems of your own choice.  

There are two excellent parallel-text Italian-English texts: Petrarch's Lyric Poems: the Rime sparse and other lyrics, ed. and trans. by Robert M. Durling (Harvard, 1976); Petrarch, Canzoniere, ed. and trans. Mark Musa (Indiana, 1999). Excellent Italian-only editions include those by Marco Santagata (Mondadori), or Piero Cudini (Garzanti), or Gianfranco Contini (Einaudi)  

 

Further recommended reading: 

Kenelm Foster, Petrarch: Poet and Humanist (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1984) 

Peter Hainsworth, Petrarch the Poet: an introduction to the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (London, Routledge, 1988) 

Robert Pogue Harrison, ‘Approaching the Vita nuova’ in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 34-44 

Nicholas Mann, Petrarch (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988) 

Vincent Moleta, ed., La gloriosa donna de la mente: a commentary on the Vita nuova (Florence, Olschki, 1994) 

John Took, Dante, Lyric Poet and Philosopher: an Introduction to the Minor Works (Oxford, Clarendon, 1990) 