MVST 041 Satire and Social Criticism - Harrison (HUMW II )
MW 6:15 - 7:30
One of the best ways to get a sense of a culture's most cherished values (and its most hotly contested issues) is to consider what its writers choose to criticize and how they attempt to do so. With a goal of making us better interpreters of medieval culture as well as more clever readers, this seminar will examine some of the subtlest, funniest, most scandalous, and most critical literature—prose and verse, fiction and history—from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Our purview will include elaborate philosophical allegory, biting parody, and tales of talking animals. While focusing attention throughout on the complexity and elegance of medieval writers, the course will also encourage perspective on contemporary questions. Prerequisites: HUMW I or its AP equivalent.
MVST 109 Medieval Latin - Johnson
An intensive introduction to the Latin language and the culture of the ancient Romans. Readings and composition exercises will focus on the acquisition of solid reading skills. At the same time, the study of Latin will enlarge students' English vocabulary and their understanding of the structures of their own language.
MVST 202 Worlds of Book of Good Love - Francomano (HUMW II course)
MW 4:14 - 5:30
The fourteenth-century Spanish "Book of Good Love" ("Libro de buen amor") is a most perplexing book. Its author, Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, promises readers that his book will be 1) a manual for salvation; 2) a manual for sexual seduction; and 3) a manual for the composition of poetry. This class will take Juan Ruiz's philosophical, comic, and literary tour de force as a central text for an introduction to medieval studies. To understand the "Book of Good Love" we will delve into the medieval history, theology, philosophy, and arts of rhetoric that produced it. We will pay special attention to the cultural crossroads of Al-Andalus, where the traditions and languages of Christianity, Judaism and and Islam coexisted. In addition to key works of the Middle Ages by St. Augustine, Boethius, Maimonides, and Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, we will read selections from Ruiz's near contemporaries Boccaccio and Chaucer. In order to better understand medieval texts and to hone their own writing skills, students will do in-class writing exercises that introduce some of the same techniques learned by medieval authors and readers. Readings and discussion are in English.
Counts for the Medieval Studies major, minor, and SFS Certificate, but open to other freshmen, sophomores and juniors; seniors by permission only.Prerequisites: None. Fulfills Humanities Writing II requirement.
MVST 203 Medieval Manuscript Cultures - Dover
TR 4:15 - 5:30 pm
From manuscript witnesses of the transitionto a Christian world, to an operetta complete with musical score, to the lavishly illustrated “histories” of medieval courts, to exquisite Books of Hours made expressly for medieval women, to the role of Jewish medieval translators and commentators, to lay piety in England, to the Book of Beasts.These are some of the manuscripts to be studied in this course. They weave a colorful tapestry of the cultural, social, and material diversity of the Middle Ages.
The emphasis will be on hands-on student involvement with the course materials. A paleography workshop, for example, will endeavor to recreate the working conditions of the medieval scribe. Exposure to the conditions of medieval production will involve students in individual projects. Students will learn to recognize various styles of medieval script, will practice reading and transcribing text from online manuscripts, and will construct a mini-manuscript of their own, following medieval practices and using medieval implements. They will also learn how to describe a manuscript, how to “read” pictures as well as text, and explore how these media interact.The text of foreign-language manuscripts will be available in translation. Online resources will be supplemented with visits to the superb resources of local museums.
A fourth-credit option will be available in the form of an internship lasting 3 hours a week for 3-4 weeks. It will give students hands-on experience of working with medieval manuscripts at the interface with electronic data /storage, through an internship with a scholar at the Smithsonian Institution.
Counts for the Medieval Studies major, minor, and the SFS Certificate in Medieval Studies.
MVST 211 Arthurian Legaends - Everhart
TR 6:15 - 7:30 pm
In this course we will explore the legends of King Arthur, the once and future king who has captured the imagination of authors and visionaries since the early Middle Ages. This course offers an introduction to medieval history, tradition, and literature as well as an analysis of the meanings and uses of Arthurian myths from the sixth through the sixteenth centuries. We will look at the social functions of the various forms in which the Arthurian stories appear - historical chronicle, narrative romance, prose and poetic formats, religious and mythic assimilations, and political allegory-- as we search for the reasons behind the appeal of these legends. Analyzing the ambiguous relationship between history and fiction, we will investigate the growth of the legends as they evolved from early historical records and the first written versions of the Arthurian tales. Archaeological evidence and the records of RomanoBritish life will help us reconstruct the context of the earliest references to an Arthur figure. We will then follow the development of the legends as they were adapted to the political, spiritual and literary perspectives of later centuries. The last few weeks of the course will be devoted to reading Malory's works in the original Early Modern English, with close analysis of Malory's borrowings from previous versions of the tales. Short writing assignments each week; two longer papers; final exam. Credits: 3
MVST 330 Medieval Monasticism - Cline
MW 1:15 - 2:30 pm
This seminar will explore the development within the Christian church of groups of men and women who rejected the traditional path of marriage, family, and the pursuit of wealth and status in favor of a lifestyle of celibacy and poverty. It will cover the origins of Christian monasticism in the third century in eastern and trace its development down to the advent of the friars in the thirteenth century in western towns. Why did men and women withdraw from society to become hermits and then compose rules for living in communities? How was the monastic impulse transformed by its encounter with western Europe in the ages of the Irish and Merovingian kings, Charlemagne, and the Vikings? Why has the Rule of Saint Benedict endured for 1500 years? What accounts for the tremendous variety of monastic orders? Why would pilgrims cross Europe to pray before the relics of Saint James of Compostela? How did preaching against heresy unify modern France? What did women seek and find in monastic life? To explore these questions, we will read some modern historians, but we will rely heavily on primary sources, especially saints’ lives and monastic rules, in an effort to understand how monasticism influenced, and was influenced by, the major historical currents of this crucial millennium in European history. 3 credits
Cross-listings
ARAB 290 Justice in the Islamic Tradition
ARTH 424 Image and Belief in the Age of VanEyck - Acres
CLSL 002 Latin II - Osgood
CLSL 310 Virgil - McNelis
CLSS 248 World of St. Augustine - Boin
ENGL 108 Chaucer - McNamer
FREN 494 Medieval French Language - Dover
GERM 024 The Germanic Christian Hero - Murphy
HIST 231 From the Millennium to the Black Death - Zimmers
HIST 338 War, Law and Politics in Medieval England - Paxton
HUMW 011 Love and Warfare: Three Medieval Epics -Murphy
INAF 224 Symbols of Faith: Symbols in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art - Soltes
ITAL 372 Dante and the Medieval Mind - Ciabattoni
PHIL 384 History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy - Bradley
RUSS 491 History of the Russian Language - Andrews
SPAN 310 Don Quixote - Mujica
SPAN 443 Medieval Spanish Literature - Francomano
THEO 080 From Moses to Muhammad: Judaism and Islam in Theology and History - Soltes
Intensive exploration of major artists (especially van Eyck, Campin, van der Weyden), works, and interpretations of painting in the Netherlands c. 1400-1475. Particular attention to changing relationships among realism, symbolism, theology, and devotional practice, but with study also of early Netherlandish painting in light of historical context, material production, historiography, conservation, and more. Includes visits to the National Gallery of Art.
An intensive introduction to the Latin language and the culture of the ancient Romans. Readings and composition exercises will focus on the acquisition of solid reading skills. At the same time, the study of Latin will enlarge students' English vocabulary and their understanding of the structures of their own language.
A survey of how the Latin language was put to use at different periods
during the middle ages and what those uses reveal about different periods of
medieval culture. Some authors to be read include Bede, Gregory of Tours,
Einhard, Alcuin, Thomas Aquinas, Abelard and Petrarch.
FALL 2010
PROFESSOR JOHN HIRSH
ENGL 108
Chaucer
A reading and discussion of Chaucer's great (if unfinished) master-work, the Canterbury Tales, a work of first importance to anyone who reads (or writes) narrative fiction. Students will read the work in original Middle English in which Chaucer wrote it, and discuss it in small and in large groups, focusing upon the work's narrative strategies, intellectual constructions, and artistic accomplishment. They will also write, in a variety of ways, about those aspects which particularly take their interest.
This course offers students the opportunity to acquire a solid working knowledge of French as a living, culturally grounded language in the 12th and 13th centuries, when French was an established medium for literary and non-literary expression. Students will learn the language hands-on through reading and studying a single work of literature. The literary text is used as the springboard for studying the grammar (morphology, syntax, vocabulary) in the context of its historical expressive usage. The course will provide students with the tools and the hands-on experience to read, understand, and translate medieval French texts into modern French or English. A good foundation in modern French language is required. Knowledge of Latin or Linguistics is not required.
Course counts towards the French major and Minor, and fulfills the department’s Post-advanced Language requirement (not the department's Linguistics Requirement for undergraduates). Also open to qualified others.
Cross-listed with Medieval Studies.
This course is aimed at the cultural transformation of the hero/protagonist over the course of time. The interactions and poetic syntheses of the Germanic and the Christian imagination of the human person will be examined from their origins to the nineteenth century in reading the following works: the Heliand, (the Dark Ages); Parzival (the time of the Crusades); In Praise of Folly (the Humanist Renaissance); Faust I (the Classical Period); and Mother Courage (the Twentieth Century). This course does not count toward the major, but it does satisfy the humanities requirement.
In the period between 1000 and 1450, Europe was transformed from a provincial backwater into one of the most dynamic regions of the world. This course will explore how this transformation took place. It will provide a survey of the second half of the Middle Ages, concentrating on the political, economic, social, ecclesiastical, artistic and intellectual developments of the period. We will examine how some of the most important institutions of western civilization--representative assemblies, universities, and the nation-state, to cite a few examples--developed in this period. Classes will contain a mixture of lecture, discussion, and structured exercises (such as debates and re-creations of historical events), with a focus on analyzing primary sources in their historical context. Spring.
This seminar will look at the relationship between warfare and the rise of the state in medieval England. Beginning with the Norman Conquest, we will examine how the need to pay for wars fought for dynastic and other reasons led the English kings to bargain with their nobles and knights for taxes in exchange for a greater voice in the running of the kingdom. We will look closely at changes in warfare, the birth of the English Common Law, and the rise of Parliament.
This course will consider the common origins and divergent and often convergent directions of the three Abraham faiths; and how those origins and directions affect their respective visual vocabularies. How have all three traditions adopted and adpted visual ideas from pagan art that predates all of them as well as from each other? How have they transformed or reinterpreted the meanings of common symbols in order to express their distinct sense of God and of the relationship betwen divinity and humanity? How have Judaism and Islam visually expressed God without the possiblity of figurative imaging and how has Christianity gone beyond the limits of figurative expression in visually articulating God? How is the legacy of antiquity and the medieval period still palpable in the era of both modern and contemporary art?
A journey of self-discovery, Dante’s Divine Comedy offers a remarkable panorama of the late Middle Ages through one man's poetic vision of the afterlife. However, we continue to read and study the poem not only to learn about the thought and culture of medieval and early modern Europe but also because many of the philosophical and moral issues confronting Dante and his age are no less important to individuals and societies today. Personal and civic responsibilities, governmental accountability, church-state relations, economics and social justice, literary and artistic influences, benefits and limitations of interdisciplinarity--these are some of the themes that will frame our discussion of the Divine Comedy. Readings and lectures in English.
Satire and Social Criticism
One of the best ways to get a sense of a culture's most cherished values (and its most hotly contested issues) is to consider what its writers choose to criticize and how they attempt to do so. With a goal of making us better interpreters of medieval culture as well as more clever readers, this seminar will examine some of the subtlest, funniest, most scandalous, and most critical literature—prose and verse, fiction and history—from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Our purview will include elaborate philosophical allegory, biting parody, and tales of talking animals. While focusing attention throughout on the complexity and elegance of medieval writers, the course will also encourage perspective on contemporary questions.
The fourteenth-century Spanish "Book of Good Love" ("Libro de buen amor") is a most perplexing book. Its author, Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, promises readers that his book will be 1) a manual for salvation; 2) a manual for sexual seduction; and 3) a manual for the composition of poetry. This class will take Juan Ruiz's philosophical, comic, and literary tour de force as a central text for an introduction to medieval studies. To understand the "Book of Good Love" we will delve into the medieval history, theology, philosophy, and arts of rhetoric that produced it. We will pay special attention to the cultural crossroads of Al-Andalus, where the traditions and languages of Christianity, Judaism and and Islam coexisted. In addition to key works of the Middle Ages by St. Augustine, Boethius, Maimonides, and Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, we will read selections from Ruiz's near contemporaries Boccaccio and Chaucer. In order to better understand medieval texts and to hone their own writing skills, students will do in-class writing exercises that introduce some of the same techniques learned by medieval authors and readers. Readings and discussion are in English.
Required for the Medieval Studies major, minor, and SFS Certificate, but open to other freshmen, sophomores and juniors; seniors by permission only. Can also count toward the English major and fulfills the Humanities & Writing II requirement.
Medieval Manuscript Cultures
An operetta complete with musical score; lavishly illustrated novels of medieval courts; the role of Jewish medieval translators; lay piety in England; the medieval Book of Beasts; a ninth- century manual on Islamic law. These are a few examples of the manuscripts to be studied in this course. Together they weave a colorful tapestry of the cultural, social, and material diversity of the Middle Ages.
The emphasis will be on hands-on student involvement with the course materials. Students will learn to recognize and practice various styles of medieval script, in a paleography workshop designed to recreate the working conditions of the medieval scribe. Students will practice reading and transcribing text from online manuscripts, and will make a mini-manuscript of their own, following medieval practices and using medieval implements. They will also learn how to describe manuscripts, how to “read” pictures as well as text, explore how these media interact, and the skills involved in editing a manuscript. The text of foreign-language manuscripts will be provided in English translation. Online resources will be supplemented with visits to the superb resources of museums in the Washington region.
A fourth-credit option will be available in the form of an internship (3 hours a week for 3-4 weeks), which will give students experience of working with medieval manuscripts at the interface with today’s electronic data /storage capabilities.
3 (4) credits.
Counts for the Medieval Studies major, minor, and the SFS Certificate in Medieval Studies
In this course we will explore the legends of King Arthur, the once and future king who has captured the imagination of authors and visionaries since the early Middle Ages. This course offers an introduction to medieval history, tradition, and literature as well as an analysis of the meanings and uses of Arthurian myths from the sixth through the sixteenth centuries. We will look at the social functions of the various forms in which the Arthurian stories appear--historical chronicle, narrative romance, prose and poetic formats, religious and mythic assimilations, and political allegory--as we search for the reasons behind the appeal of these legends. Analyzing the ambiguous relationship between history and fiction, we will investigate the growth of the legends as they evolved from early historical records and the first written versions of the Arthurian tales. Archaeological evidence and the records of RomanoBritish life will help us reconstruct the context of the earliest references to an Arthur figure. We will then follow the development of the legends as they were adapted to the political, spiritual, and literary perspectives of later centuries. The last few weeks of the course will be devoted to reading Malory's works in the original Early Modern English, with close analysis of Malory's borrowings from previous versions of the tales. Short writing assignments each week; two longer papers; final exam.
This seminar will deal with the origins of Christian monasticism in the third century and trace its development down to the advent of the friars in the thirteenth. The course will concentrate on the relationship between monasticism and Christian society as a whole. What did the men and women who withdrew into the eastern deserts hope to accomplish by rejecting society? What was their role in the wider church? In other words, what were the implications for ordinary believers of having an alternative form of Christian practice develop alongside the Christian hierarchy? How was the monastic impulse transformed by its encounter with new political and social circumstances in western Europe? To explore these questions, we will read some modern historians, but we will rely heavily on primary sources, especially saints' lives and monastic rules, in an effort to understand how monasticism influenced, and was influenced by, the major historical currents of this crucial millennium in European history. Spring.
This course surveys some of the major themes of ancient Greek and Medieval Philosophy: Knowledge and Opinion, Being and Becoming, God and the First Causes, Cosmos, Soul and Immortality, Reason and Faith. The continuity between the two periods will be stressed. We will read works of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and Aquinas. Medieval Philosophy was born from the creative interaction of biblical faith with Greek philosophy. Until the thirteenth century, Neoplatonism (which attempted to unify the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions) provided the dominant philosophical framework for speculative theology. The most illustrious of the Neoplatonists, Plotinus (205-270 A.D.), profoundly influenced Augustine (354-430), especially in regard to the mind's approach to divine reality through interior recollection. Augustine himself dominated subsequent western theology, as can be seen in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), until, in the late twelfth century, the translation and introduction of Aristotle into the Latin west, often via the Islamic philosophical tradition of the Arabs, provoked a philosophical revolution in regard to the prevailing Augustinianism. But the “Christian Aristotelianism” of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), which marks a new stage in the development of medieval philosophy, was, in fact, a creative synthesis of the Augustinian-Neoplatonic tradition (especially as mediated through the Procline Neoplatonism of Pseudo-Dionysius) with Aristotle. Of special interest is Aquinas’s critique, in the name of Aristotle, of the Aristotelians (the so-called “Latin Averroists”) in the Arts Faculty at Paris.
Course requirements consist of: (1) Four short papers (3–3½ type-written pages) due during the semester: 20 points each (= 80/170); (2) One group presentation: 30 points for each individual presentation in group performance (= 30/170); (3) One medium-sized essay (10 pages): 60 points (= 60/170).
The students are expected to keep up with the reading and to be able to engage in active discussion of the assigned material for each class session.
The course is divided into three major units:
1) Historical phonology, beginning with the major Proto-Slavic sound changes, and an examination of Old Russian texts;
2) Historical morphology and syntax, with an explicit comparison of early East Slavic to Contemporary Standard Russian (CSR), and an examination of Old Russian texts;
3) The history of the literary language, especially its codification in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the standardization efforts of the Soviet period.
Sociocultural topics incude the function of Church Slavonic versus the vernacular East Slavic in Kievan Rus’ and medieval Russia; the role of Church Slavonicisms in the various developmental stages of the language; the arguments over the codification of the language between “Westernizers” and “Slavophiles” during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the role and function of Russian as the lingua franca of the multiethnic Russian empire and Soviet state; gender and the status of women as reflected in linguistic developments during the Soviet period; the standardization of the language during the Soviet period and linguistic prejudices against non-standard speech varieties. (This course satisfies one semester of the College's social-science requirement as a linguistics offering.)
Overview
This course, designed for undergraduates, will guide students through the complete Spanish text of Don Quijote de la Mancha. We will analyze this early modern Spanish masterpiece from diverse perspectives—literary, cultural, historical, philosophical, and spiritual. We will examine the text not only with regard to content, but also in terms of style, purpose, audience, tone and voice.
This course counts toward the Spanish major and minor and meets the Humanities requirement.
Course objectives
1. Students will become thoroughly conversant with the main themes in Don Quijote and with Cervantes’ techniques.
2. Students will achieve an understanding of the social, political, religious, and philosophical currents at play in seventeenth-century Spain and with Spain’s role in early modern Europe.
3. Students will become familiar with current trends in Cervantes criticism.
4. Students will be able to draw parallels between Cervantes’s world and their own.
5. Students will improve their writing skills.
Assessment
Choosing themes suggested by the readings, students will write three short papers and one longer paper during the semester. They will receive grades for their written work and for class participation.
Required reading
Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quijote de la Mancha, Trans. Edith Grossman.
Popular and learned poetry of medieval Spain from its beginnings through the Cancioneros of the 15th century. Medieval prose from Alfonso X to La Celestina.
The purpose of this course is two-fold: to provide an introduction to Judaism and Islam—and to Islam specifically in its theological relationship to Judaism as well as to Judaism in its theological relationship to Islam—and to follow the course of that relationship as it plays out historically, in different times and places, form the seventh century to our own time.
Thus some of the questions that we will address include: What are the theological and historical circumstances in which Judaism was born? What are the theological and historical circumstances in which Islam was born? What influence, if any, did either of these faiths have on the other, given their historical interfaces? How are these influences apparent in different media, from theological and legalistic literature to symbols in art to gastronomic customs? How do putative influences change in the sweep of Islam across a wide world in which Jews are a far-flung series of diverse and even disparate communities. What are the implications of this extended past for the world in which Jews and Muslims live today and will live tomorrow?
This course examines the history and development of Christian thought and practice from the "high" Middle Ages (twelfth century) through the
Reformation (sixteenth century), into the modern world and the turn of the
twentieth century. Central focus will be on primary texts, read with an eye
toward their historical, cultural, and geographical context. The course is
divided into three parts:
(1) Middle Ages. We shall begin with the twelfth-century renaissance, when cross- fertilization among Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars gave rise to new ways of doing Christian theology; we will study scholasticism and medieval mysticism. We shall also study the Crusades (the motivating
factors, how they functioned in the imagination and piety of medieval
Christian culture, their political and spiritual effects) and the fall of
Constantinople in 1453.
(2) Reformation. We shall study the Protestant and Catholic Reformations of the sixteenth century, studying not only the theology but also the social
and political repercussions. We shall start with precursors to the reformation and then focus in particular on Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Council of Trent, and Ignatius of Loyola.
(3) The Modern Period. We shall focus on problems of articulating Christian faith in the context of the modern world, its view of history, which seems inconsistent with revelation; its scientific methods; and its emphasis on the individual and individual rights.
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