Spring 1999

In the Spring, 2002 semester, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program offered the following courses.

MSCP 80500	Medieval Welsh
	GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm.TBA, 3credits
	Professor Catherine McKenna [50073]

	This course introduces the student to Middle Welsh and its literature.It includes a survey of Middle Welsh grammar,reading and translation of the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and discussion of the scope of medieval Welsh verse and prose in its European and insular contexts from the sixth through the fourteenth century. Additional readings may be added to meet particular student interests. In addition to weekly translation assignments, there will be a midterm and a final examination. Required texts: D. Simon Evans, A Grammar of Middle Welsh, and R.L. Thomson, ed., Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet. Both published by Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and available from Books for Scholars at or Celtic Studies Publications, (781) 398-1834. Recommended: Patrick K.Ford, trans.The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (U California Press), available from the same sources.Ancient Philosophy After Aristotle {Cross listed with C L 70700 & ENGL 80700}

MSCP 80500	Paris, 1130-1270: Creation of a Capital
	W, 4:15-6:15pm, Room TBA, 3 credits,
	Professor William W. Clark [50072]
	By 1250, Paris was the largest, best organized, and the most cosmopolitan city in western Europe. This multi-disciplinary seminar will examine the conceptual and practical recovery, development, and ascendance of Paris through its social, economic, political, educational, and religious institutions. We will examine monuments and organizations from the cathedral to the university, from the royal palaces to the marketplaces, from the city walls, to the river trade to trace the creation of the capital and the Gothic style. We will study the works of scholars such Robert-Henry Bauthier, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean Dufour, among others. Special attention will be paid to such monuments as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, and the development of the manuscript trade. Students will be required to do an oral presentation and a research paper. {Cross-listed with ART 80500}

MSCP 80500	The Medieval World in Travel Narratives, Geographies, and Maps
	Th, 6:30-8:30 pm, Room TBA. 3 credits
	Professor Scott Westrem
	Near the end of the 1300s, John Gower observed that the English and the Germans were subject to lunar influence, which cause them to "travaile in every lond," their international journeys a result of the effect on them of the inconstant moon. In this seminar we will have cause to acknowledge that interest in parts of the world outside Europe was not limited to people in the north and west. The principal goal of this course, which will focus on writings from between 1200 and 1450 is to develop a sense of how and where Europeans traveled, what they imagined the world to look like, and who they thought they shared it with. Primary source readings will include reports by the intrepid Franciscans John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck, who went to the court of the Great Khan in the mid-1200s; the Description of the World (Divisament dou monde) attributed to Marco Polo (c. 1298); pilgrimage narratives and a description of the Holy Land from the great period of tension and change between 1280 and 1340; the Book of John Mandeville, from c. 1360 (in the Middle English "Cotton" Version); the "fake" travel book by Johannes Witte de Hese (c. 1391); geographical writings by Honorius Augustodunensis and Roger Bacon; and maps, including the largest surviving traditional exemplar (from the 1290s), which hangs in Hereford Cathedral. We will also pay close attention to theoretical concerns, including the matters of alterity and the "Other," what might be called pre-colonialism, explanations for wonders and monsters, and the integrity (and reliability) of the text. The seminar’s purpose is to gain a fuller appreciation for more traditional texts that describe the world or travel in it (Chaucer is an obvious example). Class requirements will include three two-to-three-page reaction papers (on specific readings), a term paper approximately fifteen pages long), and a short (five-to-seven minute) seminar presentation. {Cross listed with ENGL 80700}

Art 71100	Image/Idea Romanesque/Medieval Art
	Thurs,11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits,
	Professor Broderick [50293]
	This course is a study of the meaning of subject matter in Romanesque and Gothic figurative art from about the year 1000 to 1500 C.E. with emphasis on key monuments and their role in the evolution of style, iconography, and metaphysical ideas. The course is an exploration of both what and how works of medieval art mean. This course should be of use to students of 19th, 20th and 21st century art as medieval images and ideas have continued to have an impact on subsequent centuries. Auditors by permission of instructor. Permit students by permission of instructor and Executive Officer or Deputy Executive Officer.

ENGL 70600	Chaucer Exclusive of The Canterbury Tales
	M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits
	Professor Glenn Burger [50657]
	In this seminar we will read the poetry written by Chaucer before the Canterbury Tales, focusing in particular on The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. We will also examine the role this poetry played in "translating" a Continental and courtly tradition—drawing as it does on the work of Machaut and Froissart, Alan of Lille, and Boccaccio—and consider the relationship of Chaucer’s "courtly love" poems to the fraught political landscape of Court and City during the early reign of Richard II. The seminar will draw on a variety of theoretical approaches—cultural materialist, gender, queer, and postcolonial—in order to explore the complex possibilities offered by these texts’ interactions with their cultural moment and ours. Requirements for the course will include 1 or 2 brief seminar presentations and one 20 page paper.

FREN 81000	Medieval Poetics
	Thurs, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
	Prof. Giuseppe Di Scipio, [50258] Course taught in English
	The course will study the development of early French, Provencal, Italian vernacular poetry and their interrelationship. We will begin from their roots in the Latin Middle Ages and their classical antecedents and proceed up to the early Renaissance period around 1350-1400. We will also consider oriental influences and include popular poetry and oral tradition. The course will also speculate on and revolve around the mutual influence of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio on French literature and vice versa.As writing assignments, there will be two initial projects and a longer one for the final paper.The topics are chosen in consultation with the students in order to complement and enhance their interests and their studies. These are some texts we will utilize along with some bibliographical items for a reading list: Handbook of the Troubadours, Akehurst, F. R. P. and Davis, J. M., eds., Berkeleyz:U of California Press, 1995; Sabarier, Robert, La poesie ud moyen age. Paris: Albin Michel, 1985; Less Lais de Marie de France, Jean Rychner, ed. Paris: Librairie Honore Champion, 1983; Auerbach, Erich, Literary Languages I Its Public in Latin Antiquities & the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1993; Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. New York: Harper & Row, 1985; LeGoff, Jacques, L’imaginaire medieval. Paris: Gallimard, 1985; Zumthor, Paul, Toward a Medieval Poetics, P. Bennet, trans. Minneapolis and Oxford: U of Minnesota Press, 1992.

HIST 70400	The Historian and Medieval Visual Culture
	T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
	Prof. Pamela Sheingorn
	This course examines current issues in the study of medieval visual culture. One of its goals is to acquaint the historian with methodologies that will enable the inclusion of visual material in future research. We will take note of the ways that historians and art historians have studied visual culture in the past, but our focus will be on recent scholarship. Topics have been selected to demonstrate the integral role of the visual in medieval culture and to familiarize students with current scholarship in the field. Requirements: short weekly writing assignments in answer to response questions; attendance at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America; a book review and leading class discussion the week that book is assigned; and a prospectus (including bibliography) for a research paper on a topic in medieval history that would make substantive use of visual sources.