Fall 2004
In the Fall 2004 semester, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program offers the following courses.
| MSCP 80500 |
Self & Nation in Medieval Britain |
| Thurs., 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professors Glenn Burger Cross-listed with ENGL 80700 |
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| In this course we will examine constructions of race and
ethnicity, community and nation, gender and identity at three charged
moments in medieval British history. First, we will consider the effects of Christian conversion, Saxon invasion, and the resulting social and ethnic diversity in pre-Conquest Britain. We will examine a variety of Irish and Anglo-Saxon texts imagining community and identity in this ethnically and religiously divided terrain—Adomnan of Iona’s Life of St. Columba, Bede’s History of the English People, Beowulf, and the Tain Bo Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley). Second, we will consider the effects of the Norman conquest of England in 1066, focusing in particular on how twelfth-century texts dealing with the Celtic boundaries of the Anglo-Norman empire, British history (especially the story of Arthur), or the demonization of Jews (through the invention of the blood libel) might attempt to address the ruptures in national life caused by the ascendancy of a French-speaking Anglo-Norman ruling class over native Saxon and Celtic populations in England and the British Isles. Third, we will consider the revival of English as dominant vernacular language and the dynastic ambitions of the English crown during the Hundred Years War with France in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in such texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, the Canterbury Tales, and the Book of Margery Kempe, as well as early fifteenth-century English and Scottish uses of a native Chaucerian English tradition. Students will be expected to contribute two short, informal seminar presentations and one essay of approximately 15 pages. |
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| MSCP 80700 |
The Literature & Language of Medieval Wales |
| Thurs., 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Catherine McKenna Cross-listed with ENGL 80900 & C L 70700 |
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A rare opportunity for students of the Middle Ages to explore the literature of
one of the principal languages of Britain in its cultural, historical and
linguistic contexts. Each week, we will devote half of our class time to discussion of a medieval Welsh text in English translation, and half to the study of the Middle Welsh language. In the first week or two, we’ll make our way through a few lines of our text in the original Welsh, and as the term proceeds, we’ll be able to read more extensive passages, although we won’t give up our translations. I propose to choose texts that are in some sense in conversation with the literature, culture, and political power of medieval Britain’s other linguistic traditions — English, Norman French, Latin, and Gaelic — but welcome suggestions from students who are particularly eager to read particular texts. Among those that I would propose to read are Branwen ferch Llyr (the Second Branch of the Mabinogi), Ystoria Gereint fab Erbin (the Romance of Geraint and Enid), Breuddwyd Rhonabwy (The Dream of Rhonabwy), selections from Trioedd Ynys Prydein (the Welsh Triads), Hanes Taliesin (the story of the legendary poet Taliesin), the elegiac poetry associated with Llywarch Hen, and poetry of the historical bard Taliesin, Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch, and Dafydd ap Gwilym. We’ll use The Mabinogion translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, and published by Everyman (ISBN 0460872974 ) and Medieval Welsh Poems, translated by Joseph Clancy and published by Four Courts Press in Dublin (ISBN 1851827838, available through Amazon, etc.), as well as other texts to be distributed in photocopy and placed on reserve. For our study of the language, our principal text will be D. Simon Evans’ Grammar of Middle Welsh (published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and available from them at http://www.celt.dias.ie or secondhand through Amazon, etc.. If you have any questions, please contact cmckenna@gc.cuny.edu |
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| CLAS 72200 |
Medieval Latin |
| Fordham. Thurs., 2:30-4:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Clark |
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Course meets at the Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus |
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| C L 80700 |
The World of the Medieval Text: Geography, Travel-Narratives, and Cartography |
| W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 4 credits | |
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Professor Scott Westrem |
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This seminar will focus on concepts of space and of
the world that are reflected in medieval European texts from a variety of
literary genres, including verse narratives, geographical treatises, chronicles,
encyclopedias, travel books, and maps. Scholars have tended to dismiss "medieval geography" as, at best, naive or, at worst, "complete futility" (to apply generally C. Raymond Beazley’s judgment of mappaemundi). This assumption will be a central issue in our seminar as we read material that testifies to considerable interest in (and intriguing speculations about) space—its measurement and boundaries, human habitation within it, its witness to supernatural reality, and its connection with time—between the years 1100 and 1450. This study will allow for a wide variety of critical perspectives. For example, the geographical travel book associated with the pseudonymous Sir John Mandeville survives in some three hundred manuscripts, representing the French original and nine translations (several into English, one of which we will study, as well as Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, Irish, Italian, Latin, and Spanish), yet it is itself a compilation of earlier books, chiefly about Asia, that have been knitted together in what some call a plagiarism and others a brilliant amalgam. In thinking about this book, then, students will find ample opportunity to test a wide variety of interests and abilities relevant to medieval studies—textual criticism, linguistic expertise, cultural studies, and contemporary literary theories that question the stability of a text or its author. Similarly, the encyclopedic account of the world attributed to Marco Polo and the great world map that hangs in Hereford Cathedral attract a wide variety of critical approaches. In all our endeavors, we will remember that these works are literary and medieval, which will (I hope) force us to consider issues about language, taste, literary quality, textual transmission, scribal influences, and many other matters. Readings will be available in the original language and in translation, except for one or two in Middle English, and seminar sessions will include some training in that language. Students competent in medieval (or modern, for scholarship) forms of Latin, Italian, French, German, Dutch, or a Scandinavian language will have an opportunity to apply themselves to primary sources in these languages. Written assignments: three short (2-3 page) focused ("reaction") papers, an essay (5-7 pages) focused on some aspect of the Middle Ages that we can see or use (such as a manuscript or items in a museum), and a final research paper (10-12 pages). Each student will also make a brief (8-10 minute) presentation to the seminar members. If you have questions, you may see me (4406.01), call me (x8326), or write me (swestrem@gc.cuny.edu). |
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| ENGL 70500 |
The Canterbury Tales |
| M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 2/4 credits | |
| Professor Scott Westrem |
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It is a well-known literary fact that when Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, he
left unfinished, and quite possibly inconclusively arranged, a collection of
oral presentations representing a good variety of literary genres supposedly
delivered by a group of some thirty English men and women of all walks of life
while traveling the road to Canterbury Cathedral in order to "seeke" St. Thomas
B Becket in his shrine there, the
most popular pilgrimage site in later medieval Britain. The resulting collection of what might be called shards of narrative groups (and some of the narratives themselves lack a conventional "sense of an ending"), which the earliest manuscripts entitle "the book of the tales of Caunterbury," has guaranteed Chaucer his place with Shakespeare as a towering literary figure in English. Modern reception of Dante’s Divine Comedy or Boccaccio’s Decameron would be very different were one or the other similarly incomplete, and thus one explanation for Chaucer’s enduring status may be that, as Harold Bloom observes in The Western Canon, the Tales "consists of giant fragments" that leave the reader with "little impression of something unfinished." Although there are times when the "impression of unfinished[ness]" is quite powerful, Bloom’s sense of the work’s paradoxical aesthetic coherence may also indicate why almost every modern edition of Chaucer’s collected works, in which they are presented more-or-less chronologically (so far as this is possible), nevertheless begin with the Tales, even though almost all scholars believe he was writing it in his last years, followed by The Book of the Duchess, a poem he did in fact complete, perhaps as many as two decades before he began seriously to assemble his pilgrimage "compaignye" in his imagination. In this seminar, we will read the Book of the Duchess and most of the Tales, asking many questions, only one of which will be: What is Chaucer doing and where is he going? In other words, what is his end? Answering—or at least replying to—the question will lead us in several directions, such as examining his themes, range of genres, subtlety of characterization, flexiblity of narrative voice, quality of languages, and adaptability to a remarkable array of critical approaches during the past 125 years. We will also pay attention to crucial—if apparently fusty—matters such as codicology, since manuscript evidence may be crucial in coming to sound conclusions about the text. We will also of necessity pay attention to Chaucer’s indebtedness to the international literature of his day, particularly to the Italian and French writers of preceding generations (and his own), whose work he used and transformed in stunning ways, so that he may justly be called an originator of the very idea of comparative literature. We will also take into serious account pertinent criticism (with an attempt to grasp something of its history), including work by David Aers, Glenn Burger, Mary Carruthers, Carolyn Dinshaw, Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Donald Howard, V. A. Kolve, Steve Kruger, Seth Lerer, Jill Mann, Lee Patterson, and D. W. Robertson. Knowledge of Middle English is not a prerequisite for this seminar, although a desire to learn it is; we will spend a fair amount of time in early sessions acquiring an ability to read Chaucer in the original. I pay a great deal of attention to student writing with assignments spread throughout the semester: three informal "reaction" papers, one 6-to-8-page paper requiring work with a manuscript (original or facsimile) or some other medieval artifact, and a lengthier (15-page) research paper. If successful, this seminar will never finish . Required Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Helen Cooper (New York: Oxford U P, 1989, rpt. 1991) |
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| HIST 70800 |
The Byzantine Dark Ages, 580-843 |
| Tues., 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Eric Ivison |
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This course examines the East Roman or Byzantine Empire during the period c.
580-843, the so-called "Byzantine Dark Ages." This was an era of critical
importance for the development of Europe and the Middle East, which saw
tremendous upheavals marking the transition from the ancient to medieval worlds.
This period witnessed the end of Roman imperial hegemony with the Islamic conquests of the Middle East and the settlement of the Slavic peoples in the Balkans. It also saw the collapse of the ancient economy and the urban society of Late Antiquity, and the transformation of the Eastern Roman State into its medieval from. The crises of this period also produced major ideological controversies, the most important of which was Byzantine Iconoclasm. This course is an introduction to the historiography and sources of this period, and is conceived as a reading and discussion class, with response papers based on the set readings. Each week we will discuss a major historiographic question, using readings from scholarly monographs and articles, as well as translations of primary sources. We will all read select critical and paradigmatic studies, and students will present on individual readings that illuminate important aspects of the question under discussion. Books to be ordered from Labyrinth Bookstore Haldon, J.F., Byzantium in the Seventh Century. The Transformation of a Culture (Cambridge, 1997) Herrin, J., The Formation of Christendom (Princeton, 1987) Kaegi, W.E., Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1995). Schönborn, C., God's Human Face: The Christ Icon (Ignatius, 1994) Whittow, M., The Making of Byzantium (California, 1996) Other books and articles will be available at the Mina Rees Library or at other NYC libraries. |
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| MUS 76001 |
Subjectivity & Song in the Middle Ages |
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Thurs.. 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 3491 2 credits |
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| Professor Anne Stone |
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| Co-requisite: MUS 81201 - Perf Workshop: Middle Ages | |
| MUS 81201 |
Performance Workshop: Middle Ages |
| Thurs., 5:00-7:00 p.m., Rm. 3491, 2 credits | |
| Professor Anne Stone | |
| SPAN 81000 |
Seminar: Studies in Medieval Literature |
| M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 4 credits | |
| Professor Ottavio DiCamillo | |
| Past schedules: | Spring 2004;Fall 2003; Spring 2003; Fall 2002; Spring 2002; Fall 2001; Spring 2001 |