Updated: Monday, 29 November 1999

Final Exam Questions                See Quiz Section

NOTE: PAPERS ARE NOW FORMALLY DUE ON 13 DECEMBER AT THE FINAL EXAM.

General

Let me begin by saying how pleased and impressed I was with your essays on Boccaccio. They were, for the most part, well-written and well-argued. You all did a fine job on these papers. I truly enjoyed reading them. I was also pleased to see that not everyone followed my lead in section and argued that Boccaccio was making moral judgments. 16 of you said that he was making judgments; 19 said that he was not; and 3 said . . .  well, I didn't know what the hell these three were arguing. Everyone who turned in an essay got full credit for it.  However, only 18 people got the extra credit. Here are three very excellent samples.

Sample 1                Sample 2                Sample 3 

As for the readings, you should be done with Koenigsberger by now. Read (or re-read/review) Chapters 4 - 7 in Zophy. Pennington will be turning to the Italian Renaissance very soon, and Zophy should help you follow what he says in lecture. We will discuss Machiavelli's Mandragola in section this week. But bring Boccaccio's Decameron along with you too. I would like to make some connections between the books. Next week we will cover The Prince. 

I realize that this presents a problem for those of you who are expected to use The Prince in your papers, so the formal due date is now 13 December. You can bring them with you to the final exam. I will, of course, accept papers before then. If you need more time with your paper please let me know. 

The final version of the final exam questions is now available. Don't complain. Last year students had to prepare nine questions. I talked Pennington down to six. Outlines are your responsibility this time around. In other words, I will not be posting them. But you will find a sample for Question 3 (i.e. the decline of the papacy) on my lecture supplement page. You'll also find a very basic outline to help you with Question 6 (i.e. on the 12th Century Renaissance) there as well.

We need to schedule a review session. We can have one on either the Saturday or the Sunday before the exam. Your email assignment for this week is to tell me which day you prefer. The session will begin at about 7:30 pm and will continue for as long as you want.

Quiz

Last One!

Once again there will be TWO items on the quiz this week. Sorry, but it's for your own good. I'll bet that most of you didn't prepare the IDs from Week 12. I'm simply forcing you to prepare them.  Remember,  I did a pretty good job selecting IDs that appeared on the midterm exam.

Sicilian Vespers

Battle of Crecy

Jacquerie

Ciompi Revolt

Black Plague

Image #1

Image #2

Lorenzo de Medici, il Magnifico 
(not the person to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince; use Zophy)

NOTE/HINT: Pay attention when Pennington talks about portraiture in lecture. Two years ago he selected a portrait as the image ID. He may very well do it again this year.

Email Assignment

Tell me on which day you prefer to have the review session for the final exam: either Saturday, 11 December, or Sunday, 12 December.

CHECK THIS OUT 

BUT BEWARE !

Some of you suggested that Boccaccio was writing pornography in The Decameron. Perhaps, but personally I  don't so. To give you a taste of some REAL pornography, I've scanned in a two selections from Pietro Aretino's Dialogue's and one of his sonnets for your perusal. You might be astonished after reading them to find out that they were written in the sixteenth century. As a modern editor of the Dialogues says, "Aretino's is not only the first erotic book in the Christian world to be written in the vulgar tongue of ordinary speech [the Romans Martial and Ovid wrote dirty poems in about the 2nd century AD, for instance], but one of the few to describe the obscenity of commercial love with the vigor and health of a public spectacle turned into a morality play." 

Like Boccaccio, Aretino (1492-1556) was a satirist who made fun of the clergy and the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. He was an extremely prolific writer who often sold his services to the highest bidder. (For his reason he has been called the first modern journalist.) His satires were so feared, even by popes, that many sought to buy his favor and good will with gifts and money. Ludovico Ariosto, another great Italian man of letters, once called him the "scourge of princes." I've also scanned in a famous portrait of Aretino painted by Titian, who was one of his close friends.

Click here to get to the smut! (Read At Your Own Risk )