|
COURSE
DESCRIPTIONS
Spring 2012
RSCP. 82100 - Research Techniques in Renaissance Studies
GC: W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3/4 credits, Prof. Carroll, [17261] Cross listed with C L 71000.
The course is designed to help students work on their own research for their dissertations, orals, or research papers in Renaissance Studies.
We will study how the material conditions of texts influence their transmission and interpretation. Readings will include articles on the history of the book, as well as on literary and cultural history. We will also study the representation of books and printing in early modern texts, including Marie de Gournay’s editing of Montaigne’s Essais, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Milton’s Areopagitica.
We will also closely examine and read primary texts in manuscript and early printed form. Students will receive instruction in topics specifically related to research in the early modern period: codicology, paleography, textual editing and analytical bibliography.
The major assignment for the course is an annotated bibliography. Other assignments include exercises in paleography, analytical bibliography, and an oral report related to one of the readings.
We will make visits to the Manuscript and Rare Book Collections at the Morgan Library.
Reading list (texts from which weekly readings will be selected, and useful reference works):
Michelle P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts; Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts
A. Cappelli, Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane;
Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book
David Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book
James A. Knapp, Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England
Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance
Brian Richardson, Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy
Articles by Robert Darnton, Anthony Grafton, Arthur Marotti, and Peter Stallybrass.
RSCP. 83100 - The Renaissance Portrait
GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Lane, [17951] Course open to Art History students only. Department permission required for all others. Cross listed with ART. 85020.
A seminar centered on the exhibition, “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini” at the Metropolitan Museum, December 21, 2011 – March 18, 2012, which includes portrait busts and Renaissance medals as well as paintings. Two class meetings will be held in the exhibition.
Lectures will consider fifteenth-century portraiture in northern Europe as well as Italy, since the Flemish independent portraits that were in Italy throughout this period inspired the portrait types that became popular in Italian painting.
The course will focus on examples in the exhibition, but will expand the subject to include devotional diptychs and triptychs, self-portraits, donor portraits, portrait theory, and issues of patronage.
Student papers may focus on specific examples in the exhibition or broader topics such as painted portraits, medals, or portrait busts produced by a single artist, the use of trompe l’oeil in Renaissance portraiture, double portraits, portraits in print, female portraiture, and the patronage and/or purpose of a portrait or a specific set of portraits.
Students will be expected to have a background in both Italian and Northern Renaissance Art, and are strongly urged to visit the exhibition in December or January and read the essays in the exhibition catalogue before the beginning of the spring semester. An illustrated presentation of about 30 minutes and a term paper developed from this presentation will be required.
Requirements: An illustrated presentation of about 30 minutes and a term paper developed from this presentation will be required. Three auditors will be accepted.
Preliminary Readings:
Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann, eds. The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini. Exhibition catalogue. New York, 2011.
Paula Nuttall. From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500. New Haven and London, 2004.
RSCP. 83100 - Authenticity & Appearance in Renaissance Literature GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 4 credits, Prof. Milligan [17952] Cross listed with C L. 80900
The early modern period was marked by a fascination with the tension between being and seeming to be, giving rise to the question: Is it better to be something or seem to be so?
In an era when perspective art was theorized and when culture fashioned itself on a distant past, the art of appearance became part of the fabric of everyday life.
What is more beautiful, authenticity or artifice? Is it better to be virtuous or seem to be? Should a Jew appear to be Christian in order to avoid persecution? And, perhaps the most haunting question—Do we even posses an authentic identity without art?
This seminar will address these questions within the debate of being/seeming, and it will question how this debate may differ from the more common concepts of lying and dissimulation.
The course will begin by addressing various classical philosophical and theological commentaries on dishonesty and dissimulation, and then move to focus on Renaissance texts that address seeming and being. We will divide the semester in three thematic segments: gender, politics, and religion.
By first addressing questions of gender identity we will familiarize ourselves with the debate of men and women’s virtue and the collective surveillance that regulated it. We will then move to discuss the social control of political virtue, dependent as it is on rhetorical propaganda. And finally, we will end with the texts that tackle the moral debate of the dissimulation of religious groups (Christians, Muslims and Jews) in times of oppression.
ENGL. 81100 - Marvels Sacred & Profane: Medieval & Renaissance Drama GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. McCoy, [17356]
An examination of the links between medieval miracles, mysteries, and morality plays and early modern
comedies, tragedies, and romances, focusing on the festive, redemptive, ritual, and marvelous elements that survived the suppression of religious drama and the anti-theatrical animus of England’s Reformation.
We will focus on exploring similarities and differences between earlier “sacramental” drama and later performances whose wonders are sustained by a “potent art” that is purely theatrical and poetic.
Works considered will include The Crucifixion, The Second Shepherds’ Play, The Harrowing of Hell, The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, and Everyman and The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, The Tempest, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Malcontent as well as some transitional early Tudor dramas such as Gammer Gurton’s Needle and The Four PP.
One research paper and one oral presentation.
ENGL. 81400 - Affective Politics in the Elizabethan History Play GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. DiGangi, [17348]
On the London stage of the 1590s, a new theatrical genre emerged: the English history play. Often experimental in form, history plays addressed subjects such as the formation of national identity, the problems of anachronism and nostalgia in representing the past, and the causes of political change.
Although the political dimensions of the history play have long been acknowledged, more recent work has considered how this genre engages with issues of embodiment that have been central to early modern scholarship on gender, sexuality, social status, and affect.
In this seminar, we will read the history plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries with particular attention to the relationship between embodied experience (including that of women, commoners, servants, and criminals) and political agency.
We will consider the possibility that heightened emotional states might enhance political insight, we will explore the significance of everyday life to national history, and we will examine the conditions in which cross-status intimacies are forged between commoners and members of the nobility.
Plays by Shakespeare will include Richard III, Richard II, King John, and Henry V; other plays might include The Famous Victories of Henry V, The True Tragedy of Richard III, Thomas of Woodstock, Sir Thomas More, Peele’s Edward I, Heywood’s Edward IV, and Dekker and Webster’s Sir Thomas Wyatt.
ENGL. 83500 - Charmed Circles: Women Writing Comedy & Satire in the Long Eighteenth Century
GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Profs. Brownstein/Hintz, [17344]
"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own..." – Jonathan Swift
"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." –Peter Ustinov
"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn," Mr. Bennet says in Pride and Prejudice. Just as Mr. Bennet's wit charms readers into agreement, comedy and satire charm the reader into aligning him or herself with the writer or author.
The “charmed circles” of our title refers to the women writing comedy and satire in the long eighteenth century, who created textual coteries and cliques that excluded outsiders—and counted the reader in.
What secret knowledge did their readers imagine themselves privy to? How did women writers of the period use satire and comedy to present a vision of the society they ardently desired—and the society they hoped to avoid?
In this course, we will imagine male and female writers in conversation, and consider such topics as misanthropy and misogyny; women’s use of anger and vitriol; satire as a utopian mode; play, on and off the stage; slapstick and physical humor; and wit, true and false. We will also examine the political dimension of comedy and satire by women.
Comedy and satire have a long history as a means to disseminate social and political views. Eighteenth- century English writers figure importantly in these genres established by Greek and Roman writers; their work enriched the papers, plays, and coffee houses of the period, defining the culture and the nation. Were the attitudes and techniques of women writers of the period like or unlike those of the more famous, and famously clubbable, literary men?
Our readings of comedic and satirical texts range from romantic comedy to gentle send-ups of cherished friends to the most vicious (and partisan) of satirical attacks.
Authors will include—but will not be limited to—Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Jane Collier, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. We will draw on feminist theory, auto/biographical writings, theories of satire and humor, and theoretical models of the development of the public sphere in England.
Students will complete a presentation and a seminar paper.
HIST. 70800 - Early Modern European Cities
GC: F, 9:30-11:30 a.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Naddeo [17409]
In Cities in Early Modern Europe, we will study famous examples of the different typologies of European cities from the early modern period, that is, examples of the republic (such as, Florence), of the port (such as, Venice and London) and of the capital (such as, Paris and/or Naples).
The class will be organized around themes; and each week we will discuss selections from the readings about two to three cities, so that we can compare and contrast different types of the urban experience in early modern Europe.
Some of the themes will be: the process of urbanization and planning; forms of urban corporation, civic citizenship and governance; cities and empire; civic rituals and festivals; religious fabric, ritual and civic society; cities, gender and sexuality; cities, schooling and sites of knowledge production; cities, technology and the sciences; cities and industries; urban environments.
HIST. 77900 - Silk Roads in History, Literature & Art
GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Rossabi, [17410]
Aims of the Course:
(1) Students will be asked to analyze the readings, to identify the audience for the readings, and to expose any authorial biases.
(2) Students will master the course content—focusing on key concepts, terms, and facts.
(3) In class discussions, students should be able to formulate a thesis and to use historical facts to support their interpretations.
Requirement: Term Paper, Minimum length: 20 to 25 double-spaced pages. Will be accepted only in hard copy.
Office hours: Tuesdays, 3:15 to 4:15; Email: Morris.Rossabi@qc.cuny.edu
Reading list and schedule of readings available in the Certificate Programs Office (Room 5110)
SPAN. 71500 - Sixteenth Century Poetry GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [17466] Open to students in the HLBLL Program. Permission of the EO required for all others.
This course will focus on a micro-textual study of the poetical works of the two fundamental figures in the canon of Golden Age poetry. Poems that are representative of the metrical, generic and thematic variety practiced by both authors will be analyzed as well as their approaches to a critical reading of the new lyrical discourses.
Such study will try to recover the particular manipulation of indirect speech – figurative language – and techniques of versification, as well as the relationship between such poetical and critical texts and their cultural and historical referents and contexts.
Through the study of Garcilaso's and Herrera's works the attempt will be made to reconstruct the intricate design of poetical trends and practices in sixteenth-century Spanish literature and the creation of a first canon of classical Spanish works.
Texts to be studied include: Gracilaso de la Vega, Poesías castellanas completas, Madrid: Castalia, 1969, Ed. Elias L. Rivers; Cancionero (Poesías castellanas completas), Barcelona: Bruguera, 1982. Ed. Antonio Prieto;
Poesía completa, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989. Ed. Juan Francisco Alsina; Obra poética y textos en prosa, Barcelona: Crítica, 1995. Ed. Bienvenido Morros; Herrera, Fernando de, Algunas obras, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1908. Ed. Adolphe Coster; Algunas obras en Poesía castellana original completa, Madrid: Cátedra, 1985. Ed. Cristóbal Cuevas Poesía, Barcelona: Planeta, 1986. Ed. María Teresa Ruestes; Poesías, Madrid: Castalia, 1992. Ed. Victoriano Roncero López; Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, Madrid: Cátedra, 2001. Ed. Inoria Pepe y José María Reyes
SPAN. 87000 - Humanistic Comedy in Renaissance & Baroque Spain GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [17469] Open to students in the HLBLL Program. Permission of the EO required for all others.
This seminar will briefly examine the dramatic genre of humanistic comedy in Italy, which functioned as an important precedent for the development of drama in Spain during the early Renaissance.
Rojas was influenced by humanistic plays, some of which were written in Latin, and offered in turn in his Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea or La Celestina, a literary model for the representation of love as passion and its consequences.
Next the seminar will focus upon Lope's La Dorotea, seen as the last recreation in seventeenth century Spanish literature of the model built by Fernando de Rojas. Thus it will be studied in its relationship to Rojas's and other literary precedents, including Lope's own prior reworkings of the "Dorotea matter"; Ovid and elegiac poetry and comedy; Seneca's tragedies and some of his Neo-Stoic epistles. The study of the work as an ars amandi will be combined with that of its function as an ars poetica.
Lope's position in the polemic on Góngora and gongorismo, which developed after 1613, will be also evaluated in the context of the practices of the aesthetics of wit.
Rojas' Tragicomedia will be read in P. E. Russell's Castalia edition. Lope's La Dorotea in E. Morby's Castalia editions – major and minor; these will be compared with J.M. Blecua's for Cátedra and his older University of Puerto Rico edition.
A bibliography of secondary sources will be distributed in class.
See Also
P SC. 71901 - Modern Political Thought
GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Mehta, [17666]
HIST. 71300 - Citizenship, Religion, & Religious Minorities in Modern Europe GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Sorkin, [17408]
Top
|
