Module description
This module offers a broad overview of texts and debates on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century politics and society, with a focus on Italian thinkers. An age of incessant political and institutional experiments, the centuries between Aquinas and Machiavelli shaped the political languages of modern Europe. We will analyse canonical and less canonical texts as voices in wider debates and contexts. The conflict between secular and religious power, the different ways in which the body politic was imagined, the subordination of women and the young in the family-state compact, the problem of legitimate and illegitimate political authority are some of the themes that will be explored. We will read the works of Dante, Marsilius of Padua, Bartolus of Saxoferrato, Christine de Pizan, Leon Battista Alberti, Lorenzo Valla, Savonarola and others, together with everyday texts such as letters and memoirs.
More information available here: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=3195516&chapterid=262076
Assessment details
1 x 4000-word essay (100%)
Teaching pattern
10 x 2-hour seminars