Classical Studies:


CLST 321
The Medieval Romance of Pagan Antiquity
Rita Copeland
TR 3-4:30
Fulfills Sector 3 of the English Standard Major

Ancient epic stories had a curious afterlife in the Middle Ages.  The epics of Virgil and Statius were taught in schools, read for their moral content, and revered as philosophical teaching.  But above all, their literary afterlife was as romance:  narratives in which erotic love, individual quests, imaginary or exotic settings, and the unpredictability of adventure replace the epic emphasis on duty, collective warfare, history (including mythic history), and the determinacy of fate.  We will read Virgil’s Aeneid and some generous selections from Statius’ Thebaid, along with some late antique literary and philosophical treatments of classical epic, in order to set the stage for medieval receptions of the classical narratives.  Among medieval romances of pagan antiquity, we will read portions of two important French texts (in English translation) from the twelfth century: the Roman d’Eneas (Romance of Aeneas) and the Roman de Thebes (indirectly based on Statius’ work); and then we will look at some of the best known medieval English romances with classical themes or elements, including Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  We will look especially closely at the treatment of the figure of Dido in medieval poetry and thought.

Course requirements: several short papers, a take-home final, and a research project on which you will report to the class.

Cross-listed as ENGL 029.401.



Comparative Literature:

No listings available.



East Asian Literatures & Cultures:

No listings available.



English:


ENGL 029.401
The Medieval Romance of Pagan Antiquity --- See CLST 321.


ENGL 221.301
Early Chaucer
Wesley Yu
MW 2-3:30
Fulfills Sector 3 of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Pre-1700 or Pre-1900 Seminar Requirement of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Elective Seminar of the English Standard Major

This course will examine the Chaucer before the Canterbury Tales, beginning with the Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fouls, House of Fame, and working our way through Troilus and Criseyde, and The Legend of Good Women.  Our primary focus will be Chaucer’s wide-ranging poetic influences, especially his assimilation and renovation of various literary genres (e.g., classical poetry, French and Italian verse, romance, saints’ lives, allegory, beast fable).  At the same time, we’ll investigate Chaucer’s deeply philosophical commitments by thinking, along with him, about love, human will, and conceptions of closure (in literary terms, the efficacy of complaint, the work of poetic endings, and the poet’s accomplishments).  In this way, we’ll try to get a feel for both the cosmopolitan and philosophical sides of the poet that emerge in full bloom in his later oeuvre, the Canterbury Tales.  Requirements: enthusiastic participation, one short presentation, weekly writing exercises, and a final research paper.  No prior knowledge of Middle English necessary.


ENGL 222.401
Chivalry and Romance
David Wallace
TR 3-4:30
Fulfills Sector 3 of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Pre-1700 or Pre-1900 Seminar Requirement of the English Standard Major
Fulfills elective Seminar of the English Standard Major

Medieval romance has been a highly influential literary genre. Young men, over centuries, have been encouraged to go to war to prove their martial prowess; still today the US Marines employ chivalric imagery in looking for, the few, worthy to serve. Women, in romance, might find themselves worshipped as a domina: a position that was far from passive, since the knight might (again) be commanded to prove his worth. Indeed, a great knight such as Lancelot might be commanded by any damsel to serve her interests because he is Lancelot: who wields the power in this situation? Women might also learn and eventually monopolize the kinds of magical powers associated with Merlin; Morgan la Fay becomes Arthur’s great adversary; women sail off into the sunset when the Round Table is destroyed.

This advanced seminar offers the opportunity to follow the evolution of a specific genre and body of tales, Arthurian romance, in particular detail.  We begin with Chrétien de Troyes, the great founding genius of the romance genre, who tells of Lancelot’s comical and disastrous loving of Guinevere; he also invents the Grail Quest.  Next comes Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a text that adapts the Arthur myth to suit the new Anglo-Norman overlords of England (while telling tales that Shakespeare will later develop, such as King Lear and Cymbeline). We then consider the extremely violent alliterative Morte, a text sees Arthur become an imperial figure as he fights pagans and giants to become Emperor of Rome. All this leads to the core text of our course, Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur.  Written by a professional soldier who was active in the English civil conflicts of the fifteenth century, the Wars of the Roses, the Morte is one of the greatest and most pleasurable of all English texts.  We will follow Arthur’s career from his early acquisition of the Round Table to its final destruction. We will see a society grappling with the dilemma that its greatest knight, the figure upon all hope and safety depends, is also cuckolding the king as his queen’s lover.  We will also trace the fortunes of other great figures such as Tristram, Gawain, Gareth (kitchen boy made good), Nineveh (who supplants Merlin), Morgan La Fay, and the Fair Maid of Astolat.  We will also see how Arthurian legend has been treated in film, from the work of Eric Rohmer to John Boorman’s Excalibur; and what about Spamalot?

This course offers the kind of satisfactions that you will only have opportunity or time for at Penn: to get to know ancient material in detail that, week by week, accumulates to provide a complex and detailed view of a fascinating fictional subject.  Most of the material will be read in the original Middle English.  Class assignments will thus be shorter than in a novel class; help will be given; no previous experience required. Once all the faint-hearts and chancers have dropped away, by about week two, we should have a tight-knit and supportive seminar that allows everyone to produce their best work. Assessment will be by one shorter essay and one longer one (with research component).


ENGL 715.401
Romance
David Wallace
T 12-3

This course is designed to lead to the extensive and intensive study of one remarkable text: Malory’s Morte Darthur. The Morte was composed by a professional soldier who eventually died in Newgate, the prison reserved by the London Guildhall for the most hardened criminals. Malory wrote by way of demonstrating devotion to noble ideals that might one day win his freedom; he also composed with an eye to the book market that thrived close to his cell at Paternoster Row, close to St Paul’s cathedral. The commercial potential of the Morte was recognized by William Caxton: his 1485 edition, which happily coincides with the coming of the Tudor dynasty, converts to recreational reading what was for Malory an interminable imaginative struggle in time of civil war.

We begin with the great founding genius of Arthurian romance, Chrétien de Troyes: most of Malory’s source materials were French, and key episodes in his romance-- Lancelot and the cart, the Grail legend-- descend to him from Chrétien (albeit in reworked or garbled form). Next comes Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a text that adapts Arthurian myth to suit the new Anglo-Norman overlords of England (while telling tales later developed by Shakespeare, such as King Lear and Cymbeline). We then consider the extremely violent Alliterative Morte, a text sees Arthur become an imperial figure as he fights pagans and giants to become Emperor of Rome: this text, too, is digested into Malory’s capacious Morte. In approaching Malory’s text, we will pay due attention to differences between Caxton and Winchester: that is, between the printed edition that was the lone witness to Malory’s work until 1934 and the manuscript (discovered in a Winchester bedroom 1934, published in 1947). Many readers, such as C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, were deeply attached to Caxton’s adaptation of the text, and were loathe to let it pass; the emergence of the new Malory in the politics of the 1930s and 1940s is fascinating to contemplate. And still today, Malory’s Morte exerts a powerful imaginative and emotional hold over readers, especially male readers. The author was a convicted cattlerustler, housebreaker, rapist and traitor. Yet there has always been pressure to excuse the biographical record in order to elevate Malory as foundational figure: he somehow embodies the ideal of English gentlemanliness (carried to all points of the British Empire). Affect is thus an aspect of Malory to be continually interrogated, even as it is enjoyed. Why, for example, does the ship of queens that sails off into the sunset with Arthur’s body seem alluring to so many readers? Does this suggest an alternative, feminine realm in which the mass destruction of the Round Table might be escaped? Does this alternative feminine realm have feminist potential? Or is it a fantasy construction of males, wishing to invade a place that might save them from their own incorrigibly violent impulses? Such questions proliferate around narratives involving code-bound and complexly-motivated males such as Gawain (leader of the most powerful, non-Arthurian affinity), Gareth (‘kitchen boy’ made good), Tristram (whose story takes up fully a third of the Morte). Nineveh, the damsel of the Lake, sucks all magical knowledge out of Merlin and leaves him trapped under a rock; Morgan La Fay, another superlative magician, proves an implacable opponent of the Arthurian regime. But female agency is not wielded exclusively through magic: for every damsel, worshipped as domina, may send male lovers away on errands to prove their worth. Lancelot, the greatest knight of the world, must honor every damsel’s request because he is the greatest knight in the world.

This course offers a rare opportunity to get to grips with this singular, and highly influential text, in detail. Some attention will be paid to the textualand filmic afterlife of Malory and Arthurian tradition: Eric Rohmer, Perceval le Gallois (1978) and John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) will be considered, along with other adaptations. Students might also like to consider the longue durée history of Arthurianism, as exemplified by studies such as Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981). Examination will be by one research essay. The seminar will work collaboratively, and there will be scope for presentations.



Germanic Languages & Literatures:


GRMN 008                              
Erudition and Superstition: Daily Life in the Middle Ages
Francis B. Brévart
TTh 10:30-12               

Individuals in medieval times lived basically the same way we do today: they ate, drank, needed shelter, worked in a variety of ways to earn a living, and planned their lives around religious holidays. They talked about the weather and had sex, they had to deal with cold, hunger, illness, epidemics and natural catastrophes. Those fortunate few who could afford the luxury, went to local monastic schools and learned how to read and write. And fewer still managed to obtain some form of higher education in cathedral schools and nascent universities and became teachers themselves. Those eager to learn about other people and foreign customs traveled to distant places and brought back with them much knowledge and new ideas. The similarities, we will all agree, are striking. But what is of interest to us are the differences, the “alterity” (keyword) of the ways in which they carried out these actions and fulfilled their goals.

This course concentrates on two very broad aspects of daily life in the Middle Ages (12th–16th centuries). The first part, Erudition, focuses on the world in and around the University. Taking Paris and Bologna as our paradigms, we will discuss the evolution of the medieval university from early cathedral schools, the organization, administration, financing, and maintenance of such an institution, the curriculum and degrees offered at the various faculties, and the specific qualifications needed to study or to teach at the university. We will familiarize ourselves with the modes of learning and lecturing, with the production of the instruments of knowledge, i.e. the making of a manuscript; we will explore the regimented daily life of the medieval student, his economic and social condition, his limited, but at times outrageous distractions, and the causes of frequent conflicts between town and gown. Finally, we will investigate the role of the medieval university in European history.

The second part, Superstition, revolves around astrology, medicine and pharmacy, and magic. Focusing on the theological, sidereal, and terrestrial causes of the Black Death according to scholastic thinkers, and on the German Volkskalender, a practical guide for everyday activities and an indispensable medical companion for professional physicians and the family caretaker alike, as our point of departure, we will gain insights into the ubiquitous role of astrology in the daily life of medieval individuals and into the precarious medieval healthcare system and prevalent medical theories of the time. Special topics on medieval wonder drugs, embryology, gynecology, and misogyny will illustrate diverse aspects of medieval daily life.



History:


HIST 720-301
Research in Medieval and Early Modern History
Ann Moyer
T 1:30-4:30

In this seminar we will survey methods and techniques for all stages of the research process essential to scholarship in later medieval, Renaissance, and early modern European history: library and archival finding aids; major source collections; bibliographic tools; paleographic basics; writing and argumentation. Participants will develop and complete a research project. Particular focus on use of textual sources (cultural and intellectual history), but individual projects will be determined by interests and programs of participants.


HIST 201.301
Crusading, 1095 – 2007
Edward Peters
M 2:00-5:00

In the first part of this seminar, students will study the Crusades of the 11th to 14th centuries using original sources in translation. The second part of the course will extend from the renaissance to the present, using the crusades as a kind of trace element to gauge later European and non-European cultures. We will read examples of crusade fantasy (Tasso, Jerusalem Liberated), Reformation polemics on the crusades, enlightenment criticism (Hume, Voltaire, Gibbon, and others), the 19th-century appropriation of crusade history for France, the emergence of academic study of the crusades, the crusades in imperial-colonial propaganda, the crusades in changing Arab/Turkish views of history, and in children's literature, operas, theater, novels (Walter Scott), and movies.


HIST 410
Popes, Rome and the World
Edward Peters
T 1:30-4:30

The course will follow a chronological sequence, from the first to the seventeenth centuries. Along the chronological line we will pause often to consider particular problems and aspects of papal history and individual pontificates. The course is emphatically not exclusively a study of church- or religious – history, nor of what since the eighteenth century has been called “church-state relations.” Although it is a “religious” institution, developed during a period when religion determined much of the rest of European culture, the papacy is and also has been many other things. Its history touches all other aspects of European history: from finance and administrative structures to art and architectural history, urban design, artistic patronage, law, diplomacy, theology, and comparative constitutional and institutional history. We will also consider some of the Papstfabeln, items of papal mythology, including the persistent, but quite non-existent “Pope Joan.”



History of Art:


ARTH 217, also ARTH 617
Introduction to Visual Culture of the Islamic World
Staff
TR 12-1:30

A one-semester survey of Islamic art and architecture which will examine visual culture as it functions within the larger sphere of Islamic culture in general.  Particular attention will be given to relationships between visual culture and literature, using specific case studies, sites or objects which may be related to various branches of Islamic literature, including historical, didactic, philosophical writings, poetry and religious texts.  All primary sources will be available in English translation.


ARTH 240, also ARTH 640
Introduction to Medieval Art
Robert A. Maxwell
MWF 11-12

An introductory survey, this course investigates painting, sculpture, and the "minor arts" of the Middle Ages. Students will become familiar with selected major monuments of the Late Antique, Byzantine, Carolingian, Romanesque, and Gothic periods, as well as primary textual sources. Analysis of works emphasizes the cultural context, the thematic content, and the function of objects. Discussions focus especially on several key themes: the aesthetic status of art and the theological role of images; the revival of classical models and visual modes; social rituals such as pilgrimage and crusading; the cult of the Virgin and the status of women in art; and, more generally, the ideology of visual culture across the political and urban landscapes.


ARTH 241, also ARTH 641
Byzantine Art and Architecture
Robert Ousterhout
TR 9-10:30
 
This course surveys the arts of the Byzantine Empire--that is, the Late Rome Empire  with its capital in Constantinople, 312-1453 C.E., including Italy, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and Russia. The course will examine architecture, city planning, mosaics and frescoes, icons, sculpture, and the minor arts, with special attention given to the role of the Orthodox Church in the production and reception of works of art. Other topics include the role of art in the creation of a sacred presence, Iconoclasm and the theology of images, imperial patronage, and the relationship of Byzantine artistic culture to that of its neighbors.


ARTH 301.302
Site Seminar: 1066
Robert A. Maxwell
W 3-6

The course of European history was fundamentally altered when the Normans invaded and conquered England in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings. For the history of art, too, this clash of cultures had significant repercussions: for centuries English art bore a French imprint, just as French art continuously adapted to an evolving Anglo-Norman aesthetic.

This seminar will travel to Normandy and southern England to study the artistic production in the period immediately before and after the invasion. We will study monuments first-hand to asses the quality and nature of this cultural clash: sculpture and architecture (at Bayeux, Caen, and Jumieges in Normandy and in England at London, Winchester, Canterbury and Battle); castles (at Dover, Caen); illuminated manuscripts (at Rouen, Avranches and London); and of course the greatest testimony to the Norman invasion, the Bayeux Tapestry (all 229 feet of it!).

Permission of the instructor required.


ARTH 301.303
Architecture and Identity
Robert Ousterhout
T 3-6

This undergraduate seminar will investigate how architecture and related arts have been used to create national, religious and ethnic identities. After an initial discussion of Washington D.C., the seminar will focus on a series of pre-modern cities and their major monuments (e.g. Athens, Persepolis, Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople/Istanbul) to ask how architecture functions in the construction of identities and, with demographic and religious changes, how established identities may be contested. Finally, we will examine the redefinition of the historic past with the rise of the modern nations, and the commodification of history with the development of tourism.



Jewish Studies:


JWST 216
Jews, Christians and Pagans in Late Antiquity
Religious Studies 216
Hirshman
T 3:00-6:00

This course will focus on a number of aspects of the late antique culture shared by Pagans, Christians and Jews.  We will engage topics such as the role of the book and oral learning in each culture; magic and medicine; dream interpretation; polemics; and the image of the other generated in each culture.  Each class will investigate primary sources, accompanied by secondary readings.  All readings will be in English.

Cross-listed as NELC 216, ANCH 216, RELS 216.



Music:

No listings available.



Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations:


NELC 216
Jews, Christians and Pagans in Late Antiquity – See JWST 216.



Philosophy:


PHIL 229.001
Medieval Philosophy
James F. Ross
T,TH 12-1:30

An introductory examination of medieval philosophy, Christian, Jewish and Arabic, from about 200ad. to 1400ad...using Walter Kauffman's selections, and a background history book.  There is a lot of reading, plus required in-class performance and in-class quizzes, a mid-term paper and a final paper that requires additional research and reading.  This course is for serious students who want to understand the main currents of thought for the millennium that was the age of reasoned faith.  Prior study of philosophy is a practical necessity.



Religious Studies:


RELS 216
Jews, Christians and Pagans in Late Antiquity – See JWST 216.



Romance Languages & Literatures:


FRE 630
Introduction to Medieval Literature
Kevin Brownlee
M 2-5


ITAL 232
The World of Dante
Victoria Kirkham
TR 12-1:30

The Divine Comedy will be read in the context of Dante Alighieri's fourteenth-century cultural world. Discussions, focused on selected cantos of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, will connect with such topics as: books and readers before the invention of printing (e.g., how manuscripts were made from sheepskins, transcribed, and decorated), life in a society dominated by the Catholic church (sinners vs. saints, Christian pilgrimage routes, the great Franciscan and Dominican religious orders), Dante's politics as a Florentine exile (power struggles between Pope and Emperor), his classical and Christian literary models (Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Bible), and his genius as a poet in the medieval structures of allegory, symbolism, and numerology. Illustrations of the Comedy, from early illuminated manuscripts to Renaissance printed books in the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book Collection and contemporary film will trace a history of the forms in which the poem has flourished for seven hundred years. Class conducted in English. The Divine Comedy will be available in a text with facing English and Italian versions. May be counted toward an Italian Studies major or minor.


ITAL 520
Medieval Autobiography
Kevin Brownlee
W 2-5


ITAL 535
From Petrarch to Erasmus
Fabio Finotti
W 10-1

Poetry, epistolography, autobiography, history: redefining the status of all these genres, Petrarch marked out the foundations not only for a new textuality, but also a new anthropology, and reshaped the relation between literature, philosophy, religion, politics. The course will focus on the relations between the evolution of literary forms and the construction of personal and national identity in Europe from Petrarch’s foundation to Erasmus’ humanism. The class will be taught in English.


SPAN 630
Alfonso X: Word and Image
Michael Solomon
M 2-5

This seminar explores the extraordinary literary and artistic corpus of Alfonso X, the Castilian king who flourished during the second half of the thirteenth century. The course begins with a detailed study of Alfonso's scientific, historical, and legal writings, followed by an extensive study of Alfonso's most celebrated work, Las Cantigas de Santa María. We will work at length on the visual aspects of Alfonso's work, focusing on 200 sets of miniatures that accompany the musical notation and text of the opulent Escorial "Codice rico." Background readings include: St. Augustine's Confessions and El libro de Alexandre. Works from the Alfonsine corpus include: Estoria general, Estoria de Espanna, Los siete partidas, Cantigas d'escarnio e maldicer, Libros del Saber de Astronomía, and Las Cantigas de Santa María.

For more information, please go to the course webpage.



Slavic Languages & Literatures:

No listings available.