Università Roma Tre

The legend of Dante and Petrarch: from the myth of the three crowns to the modern age. The aim of the course is to provide students with basic analysis and knowledge on a broad chronological field of Italian Literature, offering as a common thread the critical fortune of the masterpieces of the fourteenth century, in particular the Comedia by Dante and the Canzoniere of Petrarca: two works progeniting two opposing expressive tendencies that have long faced each other throughout Italian literary history. Of these works, in addition to the timely reading of some excerpts, will be illustrated the reception, which will be the starting point to deepen the poetics of several authors who have in turn been readers and interpreters of the masterpieces of Dante and Petrarca and followers of their stylistic ideas (among them Bembo, Tasso, Vico, Alfieri, Foscolo, Monti, Leopardi). Particular attention will be devoted to the lives of Dante and Petrarch and their reception over the centuries, from the legends that arose around Dante to the Renaissance reconstructions of Petrarch's life.

A university-level commented edition of Dante's Comedy and Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. The commented edition of teh Comedia by G. Inglese, Rome, Carocci, 2016, and the ed. of the canzoniere by Paola Vecchi Galli, Milan, Rizzoli, 2012, or that by Marco Santagata, Milan, Mondadori, 2018, are recommended.