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This course is intended to familiarize students with the intellectual world of Renaissance Italy, or more specifically, the “lost” Italian Renaissance of the long fifteenth century, from the time when Petrarch (1304-74) was in full maturity to the 1520s. During this period, most Italian intellectuals wrote the majority of their work in Latin – not the Medieval Latin of the Church and the universities but in what they saw as a more authentic Latin, like that used in ancient Rome, in the time of Cicero, Virgil, Quintilian, and others. These Renaissance “humanists,” inspiring by the example of Roman, and eventually Greek, antiquity, believed that they were carrying out a cultural revival. Who were these humanists? Why then did they choose Latin (and a reformed Latin at that) instead of their “native” tongue as the language in which to effect this renewal? What did this choice afford them in terms of literature and philosophy? Why was this phase of literary and philosophical history undervalued in the evolution of modern scholarship? By the end of this course, you should be able to formulate answers to those questions.Some of the works of these authors still await editions, lying in manuscript libraries or difficult-to-access early printed editions. Many have now had their Latin texts edited, and a number have recently been translated into English. Students therefore have the chance to explore work in a field that is new and growing. A separate Renaissance Latin reading group will accompany the course for those who have studied Latin.