CLS 122 — A Bloody Mess: The Dark Side of the Renaissance
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Filippo Gianferrari
Date(s): Jan 12—Mar 16
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Mondays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Please Note: No class on January 19 and February 16
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Jan 14
Unit(s): 1
Status: Open
Quarter: Winter
Day: Mondays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jan 12—Mar 16
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Jan 14
Instructor(s): Filippo Gianferrari
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Open
Please Note: No class on January 19 and February 16
The Renaissance is remembered as a golden age of beauty, learning, and innovation, a time when Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa and Galileo turned his telescope to the stars. But beneath this gilt surface lay a world of power struggles and calculated brutality. This course examines how one of history’s most celebrated eras was also one of its most atrociously violent.
We begin in republican Florence, where the literary legacies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio took shape amid factional bloodshed and public executions. From there, we follow the Medicis’ ruthless ascent culminating in the infamous Pazzi conspiracy, when assassins struck Lorenzo de’ Medici and murdered his brother Giuliano during High Mass. We then turn to the courts of northern Italy, where culture flourished alongside espionage, poisonings, and propaganda. Students will engage with works from Machiavelli’s The Prince to recent docuseries like PBS's The Blood and the Beauty, asking why this period endures as a symbol of progress despite its darker truths.
We begin in republican Florence, where the literary legacies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio took shape amid factional bloodshed and public executions. From there, we follow the Medicis’ ruthless ascent culminating in the infamous Pazzi conspiracy, when assassins struck Lorenzo de’ Medici and murdered his brother Giuliano during High Mass. We then turn to the courts of northern Italy, where culture flourished alongside espionage, poisonings, and propaganda. Students will engage with works from Machiavelli’s The Prince to recent docuseries like PBS's The Blood and the Beauty, asking why this period endures as a symbol of progress despite its darker truths.
FILIPPO GIANFERRARI
Associate Professor of Literature, UC Santa Cruz
Filippo Gianferrari teaches courses on Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, the Italian Renaissance, translation theory, Primo Levi, and Holocaust literature. He is the author of Dante’s Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Poetics and the co-editor with Ronald Herzman of the forthcoming Dante’s Paradiso: A Reader’s Guide. His new research project is titled Political Eschatology: Vernacular Theories of the Common Good. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Niccolo Machiavelli, George Bull (Trans), The Prince (ISBN 978-0140449150 )
(Required) Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Oxford World's Classics) (ISBN 978-0199540389)
(Optional) Stefano Ugo Baldassarri(Ed.) & Arielle Saiber (Ed.), Images of Quattrocento Florence : Selected Writings in Literature, History, and Art (ISBN 978-0300080520)
(Required) Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Oxford World's Classics) (ISBN 978-0199540389)
(Optional) Stefano Ugo Baldassarri(Ed.) & Arielle Saiber (Ed.), Images of Quattrocento Florence : Selected Writings in Literature, History, and Art (ISBN 978-0300080520)