ARTH 100-301—Freshman Seminar
The Landscape of Dreams: Sleep, Dream, and Fantasy in the Renaissance
Fall 2004
Tuesdays
Dr. Maria Ruvoldt
Office: 3619 Locust Walk, 205
Email: mruvoldt@sas.upenn.edu
Phone: 215-746-5948
Office hours: Tuesdays 3-4 and by appointment
Course
Requirements
There are four main components to the work for this class:
1. Class participation:
This is a seminar. Your active participation in class is essential; your presence is therefore required each time we meet. Required readings for each class meeting are listed on the schedule. Unexcused absences and/or chronic lack of preparation will lower your final grade. Contributions to the course discussion board, in advance of class meeting, will facilitate discussion and contribute to your class participation grade.
2. Reading log
You are required to keep a weekly reading log to develop your critical reading skills. Each week, you should briefly summarize the reading, make note of key terms and concepts, and think about how the readings relate to class discussion. I may ask to see this periodically, particularly if there are concerns about your preparation or participation. This will also form the basis of your final essay, and will be due on the last day of class.
3. Written assignments
There will be five short written assignments (approx. 2 pages), on a variety of topics. We will discuss the details of these assignments when they are distributed in class.
4. Final question and essay
The course will culminate in a
comprehensive essay, due on the last day of class. No later than
Grading Policy
1. Class participation (including discussion board posts) 20%
2.
3. Written assignments 40%
4. Final question and essay 25%
Note: Late papers and assignments lose one letter grade per day.
Unless otherwise noted, all of the assigned readings are on course reserve at Fisher Fine Arts Library. Many of the readings will also be accessible on the course’s Blackboard site. Images that we discuss in class will also be made available online each week.
Class Schedule
September 14 Introduction
September 21 On the
Interpretation of Dreams
Assignment #1 Due
Artemidorus of Daldis, Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Robert J. White (Torrance, CA: Original Books, 1990), 21-37, scan rest of book, esp. 132-137.
Marsilio Ficino, Divinatio de amico (1 March 1473) [Letter to Carlo Marsuppini] and Votum, Oraculum, Miraculum (15 July 1479) [Letter to Bernardo Bembo], in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, 5 vols., trans. Members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975-1994), 1:109-110, no. 63 and 5:33, no. 17.
Sigmund Freud, On the Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter II, “The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of a Specimen Dream,” and Chapter VI, “The Dream-Work,” sections D, “Considerations of Representability” and E, “Representation by Symbols in Dreams—Some Further Typical Dreams.”
Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 69-77; 87-94.
September 28 Sleep, Vision, and Visual Culture
Michael
Baxandall, “The Period Eye,” Painting and
Experience in Fifteenth-Century
Martin Kemp, “The ‘Super-Artist’ as Genius: The
Sixteenth-Century View,” in Genius: The
History of an Idea, ed. Penelope Murray (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989),
32-53.
Erwin Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes
on the Renaissance-Dämmerung,” in The Renaissance: Six
Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 121-182.
October 5 The
Sleep of Reason
Noel Brann, The Debate Over the Origins of Genius During
the Italian Renaissance: The Theories of Supernatural Frenzy and Natural
Melancholy in Accord and in Conflict on the Threshold of the Scientific Revolution
(
Marsilio Ficino, De divino furore (1 December 1457) [Letter to Peregrino Agli], in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, 5 vols., trans. Members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975-1994), 1: 42-8, no. 7.
Horace, On the Art of Poetry, in Classical Literary Criticism, trans. T.S. Dorsch (London: Penguin Books, 1965), 79-95.
Plato, Ion.
October 12 Sleep and Gender: Mars,
Endymion, and Apollo
Assignment #2 Due
Pietro Bembo, “Sogno, che dolcemente m’hai furato,” “Se ’l viver men che pria m’è duro e vile,” and “Mentre ’l fero destin mi toglie e vieta,” (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
Il Chariteo [Benedetto Gareth], “Somno, d’ogni pensier placido oblio,” (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
Kenneth Clark, “The Naked and the Nude,” The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956), 3-29.
Jacopo Sannazaro, “O Sonno, o requie, e tregua degli affanni,” “Ahi letizia fucage, ahi sonno lieve,” “Mentr’ a mirar vostr’ occhi intento io sono” (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
Panfilo Sasso, “O dolce Sonno, oimé, perché fuggita” (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
Ercole Strozzi, “Sonno, che gli animali, uomini e dei” (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
October 19 The Sleeping Female Nude
Assignment
#3 Due
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, Day 5, Introduction and first story (Cymon and Iphegenia).
Charles Hope, “Problems of Interpretation in Titian’s Erotic
Paintings,” in Tiziano e Venezia: Atti
Joan Kelly, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Women, History and Theory: The Essays of
Joan Kelly (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 19-50.
Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 5-33.
David Rosand, “Ermeneutica Amorosa: Observations
on the Interpretation of Titian’s Venuses,” in Tiziano e Venezia: Atti
October 26 FALL
BREAK—NO CLASS
November 2 Word
and Image: The Problem of the Book
Assignment #4 Due
****This class will meet in the Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, 6th Floor, Van Pelt Library*****
Elizabeth Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and
the Problem of the Renaissance,” Past and
Present 45 (1969): 19-89.
November 9 Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili
Patricia Fortini Brown,
Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love
in a Dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 2-46
and scan rest of book.
Helena Katalin Szépe, “Desire in the Printed
Dream of Poliphilo,” Art History 19
(1996): 370-392.
November 16 Dream, Fantasy, and the
Interpretation of Images
Assignment
#5 Due
Martin Kemp, Behind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 164-255.
David Summers, “L’alta fantasia,” Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 103-143.
November 23 The
Artist as Dreamer
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Selected sonnets (distributed in class and on Blackboard).
Jean Michel Massing, “Dürer’s Dreams,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 238-244.
Erwin Panofsky, “The Neoplatonic Movement and
Michelangelo,” Studies in Iconology:
Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance [1939] Reprint (New York: Harper & Row, Icon
Editions, 1962).
David Rosand, Drawing
Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation (
November 30 Dreams and Décor
Stephen J. Campbell, Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture, and the Renaissance Lucretius,” Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 299-332.
Harvey Hamburgh, “Naldini’s Allegory of Dreams for the Studiolo of Francesco de’Medici,” Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996): 679-704.
Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and
Experience in Renaissance
**********FRIDAY
DECEMBER 3 FINAL QUESTION
DUE**********
December 7 FINAL ESSAY AND READING LOG DUE