Visualising Boccaccio's Decameron Across Arts and Media
Affiliation
This option explores a masterpiece of classical Italian prose, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-1353), a collection of 100 tales told by 10 young people (seven women and three men) who flee plague-stricken Florence to a delightful villa in nearby Fiesole. This course will contextualise and analyse the original text, as well as look at its afterlife across arts and media in the following centuries. We will examine topics, such as fortune, love, death, wit, and critically engage with questions of gender, class, sexuality, and religion. Students will gain an insight into Italian medieval culture and society, as well as examine and discuss how themes, stories, and characters of the Decameron have been appropriated in painting, fiction, theatre, cinema, comics, and pop music across the centuries.
This course is taught and assessed in English.
Year taken: Postgraduate
SCQF Credits: 20