ENG 200/294: “Imagining Italy”

(3 credits)

Professor Mark Lussier | E-mail

Italy, since the Renaissance to our own day, has figured as a ‘paradise’ to which writers from across the European continent (and indeed America as well), although what attributes define this paradise varies from writer to writer. This course will explore the variety of ways that writers in three genres (poetry, prose, and drama) have ‘imagined’ Italy, whether they literally describe the country and its people, as in Goethe’s Travels in Italy or whether Italy functions as a location for the projection of politically sensitive concerns, as in Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d, or A Plot Discovered.

By the end of the summer semester, students will express their own views of the magical city of Florence and the landscape and cityscapes of Italy, joining their insights to those studied during the class.

The course, English 200, is required for the English major, and if students have already completed that gateway course, then English 294 will function as an elective within the major.