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Fall 2001

In the Fall, 2001 semester, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program offered the following courses.

MSCP 70100 Introduction to Medieval Studies
W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits
Professor William Clark
This course seeks to enable students of the Middle Ages to situate their specific interests and projects within a broad, multidisciplinary framework; to pose questions informed by an awareness of current issues in medieval scholarship; and to undertake successful research at every level from the identification of manuscript materials to the use of electronic resources. There will be weekly written exercises and oral presentations rather than a single long paper. In order to provide some coherence for this work, each prospective student is asked to think of a topic -- a text, a reign, a cult, a building -- that can serve as the focus of his or her work in the course.
MSCP 80500 Introduction to Medieval Irish
W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
Professor Catherine McKenna {Cross listed with C L 70700 & ENGL 80700}
This course introduces the student to medieval - Old and Middle - Irish and its literature, that is, to the language and literature of pre-Norman Ireland from the seventh to the twelfth century. We begin, of necessity, by focusing on the grammar of Old Irish which establishes the basis of medieval Irish, and gradually explore the various ways in which Middle Irish transformed standard Old Irish from the ninth century on. Although the language has earned its reputation for difficulty, we are able to refresh ourselves in the midst of the linguistic labors by reading of selections from early Irish lyric poetry, hagiography, and saga, both in Irish and in translation. We also survey the history of Irish literature, Europe's earliest vernacular literature, from the seventh century to the twelfth, and students are encouraged to read additional texts in translation. In addition to weekly translation assignments, there will be a midterm and a final examination.
MSCP 80500 Levantine Culture between Empire and Nation
M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 4 credits
Professor Ammiel Alcalay (Cross listed with C L 85500)
This course will explore the qualities of medieval culture in the context of its European, Levantine and Middle Eastern Islamic, Judeo-Arabic and Romance manifestations. Our approach will be prospective and retrospective. To begin with, we will establish the geographic, economic, linguistic, religious, social and cultural terrain we are exploring (through readings in S.D. Goitein's A Mediterranean Society, Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades: An Islamic Perspective, as well as primary literary, religious and historical texts that include selections from Ibn 'Arabi, Abbasid poetry, Andalusian Hebrew poetry and rhymed prose narrative, as well as other works. (All of these texts will be available in English). We will relate this lesser known realm to languages, texts and cultures that are more familiar in their Eurocentric context. However, as we do this, we will consider a variety of contemporary angles through which Levantine culture has either been refracted or distorted. In other words, how and when did certain languages, texts and cultures come to take precedence over others, to the point of excising them from the curriculum? Since so much medieval social and cultural life stands in direct contradiction to institutional representations of national history in the formation of national identities because of its hybrid nature, we will also look at how Levantine culture has or has not been transmitted or represented and the effects this has had on the constructions of inheritable "national" pasts. For example, the several hundred year old traditions of rhymed prose narratives in Arabic and Hebrew are rarely considered as part and parcel of a medieval narrative tradition that would include Dante, Chaucer, Libro de Buen Amor, Boccaccio and others. Readings here may include Memory for Forgetfulness by Mahmoud Darwish, Introduction to Arab Poetics by Adonis, selections from several Bosnian writers (both contemporary and late medieval), and other sources such as The Bridge Betrayed by Michael Sells.
Students will be expected to pursue a topic of interest in which they utilize the medieval sources as a means of exploring current geo-political, national, cultural and religious conceptions of the past. These topics can be taken on thematically or geographically, depending upon interest as well as linguistic capability of taking on primary research in one area or another.
Modern English versions for a number of these texts are available, but their use for course work will be discouraged.
ART. 71500 Age of Giotto:Italy 1250-1400
W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 3416, 3 credits
Professor Michael Mallory
This course will examine the art of Florence, Padua, Siena, Rome and Assisi from c. 1250 until c. 1400. Called Late Gothic or Proto Renaissance by art historians, this period is witness to a transformation in religious and secular art that paves the way for the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. Major painters and sculptors to be studied include Nicola, Giovanni, and Andrea Pisano, Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio, Simone Martini, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Topics to be discussed include: the evolution of the altarpiece, the development of large-scale fresco decoration, Giotto and Duccio and the growth of visual narratives, the role of secular art, and the effects of the "Black Death" on the art of its time. Auditors permitted.
ENGL. 70300 Introduction to Old English
M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits
Professor E. Gordon Whatley
Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg ('that passed away, so can this,' Deor)"Old English" (OE) constitutes the first documented phase of the English language (ca. 700-1150), and OE literature is by far the most plentiful and diverse of the surviving vernacular literatures of Europe prior to the 12th century. While some knowledge of OE forms and sounds is essential for serious work in Middle English and Scots, OE literature is of deep and abiding interest in itself. Although the language at first glance looks difficult, students routinely find it is possible to acquire a basic working knowledge in a 14-week course such as this one. After six weeks' on shorter translation exercises and some grammar, the focus shifts to reading, in the original and in translation, more extensive passages of secular and religious prose, including a 10th century life of the "transvestite" saint Eugenia, followed by some classic pieces from the surviving poetry manuscripts (Dream of the Rood, Judith, Wanderer or Seafarer, the fall of Satan and temptation of Adam and Eve from Genesis B, and The Wife's Lament or one of the riddles). In addition to working on the weekly texts, each student will occasionally report briefly on selected critical studies interpreting or theorizing the readings. Also required is a modest paper (12-15 pp) on any topic in Anglo-Saxon literary culture. Students with some prior experience and enjoyment of learning a modern or ancient European language should have little difficulty handling the work. A useful, elementary computer program for learning OE is available, and more sophisticated aids are now being developed on the Web. Contact me with queries re. books, etc., and please register early if you plan to take the course: gwhatley@att.net
ENGL. 70800 Medieval Survey
T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits
Professor Michael Sargent
One of the best ways to survey medieval literature is in the manuscript context in which its original readers would have known it - texts of variable shape and contents, juxtaposed by the hand(s) and intentions of their compiler(s). This course will explore late Middle English literature through an examination of one of the largest and best-known of such manuscript compilations: the Vernon manuscript, a 50-pound folio behemoth originally compiled, probably, for a community of Cistercian nuns in the east midlands, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. In the time of King Alfred, this area was the center of English literary culture; but by the later middle ages, as Chaucer's London grew in importance, it was almost a backwater - yet still capable of producing treasures - or, in this case, entire treasuries - of literature.
The manuscript was entitled "Sowlehele" - The Soul's Health - by the scribe who provided it with a table of contents; and it contains a virtual library of the writings that would have been thought necessary to the edification of a later medieval women's religious community: a unique translation of Aelred of Rievaulx's letter of spiritual instruction to his sister, the De Institutione Inclusarum; a collection of saints' lives and readings for movable feasts arranged according to the ecclesiastical year, the "South English Legendary"; a translation of the Estorie del Euangelie; a collection of "Miracles of Our Lady"; the "Northern Homily Cycle"; translations of Edmund of Abingdon's Speculum Ecclesie and of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Stimulus Amoris, "The Prick of Love"; a version of the Ancrene Riwle, the A-text of Piers Plowman and several works of Walter Hilton, including the earliest version of Book I of The Scale of Perfection, and other pieces in verse and prose.
Our approach to these writings will be through modern critical editions that attempt, in various ways, to recreate an ideal "authorial" text (few if any of the texts in Vernon are autographs), through diplomatic editions that represent the Vernon version of a particular text, and through the manuscript itself, which we will examine in facsimile. Previous exposure to Middle English (e.g. an undergraduate Chaucer class) would be helpful, but is not necessary.
HIST. 70800 The European City 1000-1800
Th, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
Professor Margaret King
This course will consider the evolution of the city from around 1000 CE, when the process of European urbanization begins, until about 1800, the point at which industrialization is about to transform the urban scene yet again. During this 800-year period, cities change from being, in Europe, exceptions in a rural landscape, to being the capitals of nation-states and the key centers of civilization. That evolution will be considered in two ways. We will consider the history of the city from different theoretical vantagepoints. We shall also consider the histories of individual cities or problems, and relate the patterns of their development to the theoretical frameworks earlier introduced.
HIST. 78900 Maimonidian Controversy
Th, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
Professor David Berger
The desirability--even the permissibility--of studying non-Jewish culture, including philosophy, the sciences, literature and history, was a central point of contention among medieval and early modern Jews. This course will examine the unfolding of these controversies and their impact on Jewish society and religion from the dawn of the Middle Ages through the attacks on the writings of Maimonides to the reappraisals of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Few issues played as central a role in shaping the intellectual and religious profile of Jews and defining the crucial distinctions between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewry.
PHIL. 76100 Medieval Philosophy
W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
Professor Frederick Purnell, Jr.
A survey of some of the major problems which occupied Western philosophers from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries, focussing upon the tranmission and adaptation of the ancient philosophical traditions within the Latin, Jewish and Arabic cultures. Readings will include selected passages from the works of such thinkers as Augustine, Anselm, Abailard, Avicenna, Averroes,Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Problems examined will include the relation of faith to reason, the sources and limits of knowledge, human freedom and immortality.