Classical Studies:


CLST 396
History of Literary Theory--See COML 383



Comparative Literature:


COML 114
Persian Mystical Thought: Rumi--See NELC 115


COML 235
Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity--See SLAVIC/RUSS 234


COML 383
History of Literary Theory
TR 12:00-1:30
Rita Copeland

Fulfills Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Sector 3: Early Literature to 1660 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 is a course on the history of literary criticism, a survey of major theories of literature, poetics, and ideas about what literary texts should do, from ancient Greece to examples of modern European and American thought. The course will give special attention to early periods: Greek and roman antiquity, especially Plato and Aristotle; the medieval period (including St. Augustine, Dante, and Boccaccio), and the early modern period (where we will concentrate on English writers such as Philip Sidney and Ben Johnson). We'll move into modern and 20th century by looking at the literary (or "art") theories of some major philosophers, artists, and poets: Kant, Wordsworth, Marx and Engels, Matthew Arnold, the painter William Morris, T. S. Eliot, and the critic Walter Benjamin. We'll end with a very few samples of current literary theory. The point of this course is to look closely at the Western European tradition which generated debates about problems that are still with us, such as: what is the "aesthetic"; what is "imitation" or mimesis; how are we to know an author's intention; and under what circumstances should literary texts ever be censored. We'll have a number of small writing assignments in the form of "response" or "position" papers (approx. 3 pages each), and students can use these small assignments to build into a long writing assignment on a single text or group of texts at the end of the term. Most of our readings will come from a published anthology of literary criticism and theory.

Cross-listed with ENGL 394.401, CLST 396


COML 527
The Religious "Other" in the Lives & Cultures of Medieval Jews, Christians & Muslims--See HIST 523


COML 534
Women in Poetry. From the Trobairitz to the Petrarchans--See ROML/ITAL 534



East Asian Literatures & Cultures:


No listings available.



English:


ENGL 021.001
Intro to Medieval Literature
MW 2:00-3:30
E. Steiner

Fulfills Sector 2: Language, Literature and Culture of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Sector 3: Early Literature to 1660 of the English Standard Major

You need no previous experience of medieval literature to do well in this course - just bring your curiosity and enthusiasm!

We will be reading a wide variety of medieval prose and poetry from the later Middle Ages: tales from Chaucer, Arthurian romances, female saints' lives, travel narratives both real and imagined, political treatises, devotional poetry, plays, and chronicles. The goal of the course is to expose you to the wonderful diversity of 13th to 15th-century literature; thanks to Middle English Boot Camp, you will all become masters of Middle English as well. As we read, we will be asking questions about reading, writing, and authorship relevant to literature of all periods. How do written technologies, such as manuscripts, shape the way we imagine the world, our past, and ourselves? What might it mean to write in a culture with multiple literary languages (French, Latin, and English), each of which comes with its own social "baggage"? How can a writer claim to have a public voice, if it takes several days to carry a message from the center to the periphery? When can an author be said to innovate in a culture that deeply values tradition and has staked everything on a sacred past?

Assignments will include a midterm exam, a final paper, and several short exercises, including a manuscript exercise in Van Pelt's Rare Books and Manuscript Library.


ENGL 225.301
Chaucer Renaissance Man
MW 3:30-5:00
David Wallace

Fulfills Sector 2: Language, Literature and Culture of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Sector 3: Early Literature to 1660 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

Geoffrey Chaucer lived between 1343-1400 and thus qualifies as medieval. The Middle Ages, as first defined in the Renaissance, has long been understood as a period of backwardness and superstition. But there was no judicial torture in Chaucer's England (as there was in Renaissance England, and under US jurisdiction today); no witches were burned; nobody put to death for their religious beliefs. Chaucer's England showed immense resilience in recovering from the bubonic plague that wiped out one third of Europe's population (perhaps one half) in 1348-9; the period c. 1370-1400 is one of the three greatest in English literary history, along with c. 1580-1610, 1790-1820. And Chaucer himself is more of a Renaissance man than any subsequent writer. He studied and translated scientific treatises and works of astrology; of theology; of alchemy, plus works of philosophical dialogue and theories of dreams. He was fascinated by the lives and fate of those who lived in pagan antiquity; by what happens after death; by farts (and the Aristotelian theories interpreting them as eloquent forms of speech). His earlier writings explore dream vision formats and the lives and loves of those trapped in the doomed city of Troy. His Canterbury Tales is the most generically diverse creative work in the English language, exploring everything from bedroom farce to animal fable and from romances of chivalry to lives of saints. Chaucer is a brilliant creator of first-person speakers: characters such as the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath who live by their wits and who deliver virtuoso verbal performances. Chaucer explores various views of Judaism and Islam is fascinated by the Orient, the far east, as a place of fantasy and magic.

Chaucer wrote his poetry to be read aloud, so much emphasis in this class will be placed upon verbal performance. And since each performance is an act of interpretation, much attention will be paid to the ways in which we read. This will be done gradually and collectively, so nobody will be put on the spot. But by the end of the semester the whole class should be fluent readers of Chaucer.

This class will be more demanding than most and is best suited for seniors and juniors. Examination will be by just two pieces of work: a short essay, plus a longer research paper.


ENGL 394.401
History of Literary Theory--See COML 383


ENGL 707.301
Anglo-Saxon England and Its Afterlives
T 12:00-3:00
E. Steiner

The first half or more of this course will be devoted to the study of 8th-12th-century language and literature, with attention to grammar, metrics, translation, and transmission. We will cover a wide range of texts, such as the Life of Saint Andrew, a saint who saved his followers from cannibals; Aelfric's Preface to his landmark prose translation of the bible; King Alfred the Great's Preface to Gregory's Pastoral Care, a brilliant meditation on the relationship between memory and culture; Wulfstan's thunderous Sermon to the English, which rebukes the Anglo-Saxons for stooping to fratricide, incest, and child slavery during the Viking invasions; the very strange collection of monstrosities and prodigies, which we call The Wonders of the East; "Caedmon's Hymn", what might just be the first recorded poem in English, supposedly composed by an illiterate cowherd; and the stunningly beautiful lyric poem "The Dream of Rood" in which the Cross recounts its heroics during the Crucifixion.

In the second half of the course we will turn to post-Conquest literature (and beyond), as we explore the ways that medieval writers documented and theorized the Anglo-Saxon past. This section of the course will be determined in large part by the interests of students. Our questions will include the following: what constitutes a significant event? In what ways do different genres - chronicles, saints' lives, encyclopedias, sermons, romances, genealogies, geographies - offer competing or affirming views of the past? Do linguistic change and continuity matter? What impact did the Anglo-Saxons' pressing concerns with conquest, anonymity, decadence, and suffering have on later writers? And how did pre-Conquest England serve the needs of later English propaganda, antiquarianism, and reform?

Texts will include Ranulph Higden's popular universal history, the Polychronicon (c. 1320s-50s, later translated and updated by England's first printer, William Caxton), the reception of Bede's continually recycled Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 731); alliterative poems such as St. Erkenwald (c. 1390), and several genealogical rolls in Philadelphia collections.

Students are not expected to know Old English, but we will need to get up to speed pretty quickly (and for that reason, we will read more prose than poetry). A working knowledge of Middle English is helpful.

Undergraduates are not permitted to take 700-level courses.


ENGL 725.401
Advanced Chaucer Seminar
M 12:00-3:00
David Wallace

The contents of this seminar will be adapted to fit the particular interests of those taking it-so please write to me with your picks and pans. This will be an advanced Chaucer seminar: an opportunity to read those texts of Chaucer often ignored, such as the Boece, the Romaunt of the Rose, the Tale of Melibee and even the Parson's Tale. We will want to read the dream poems, but also continental texts associated with them, such as (connecting with the Book of the Duchess) Machaut's Jugement du roi de Behaigne. The New Chaucer Society's biennial meeting will be in Siena in 2010, so we can tune up by coupling Chaucer with some Italian writing: Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseida, his de casibus and de mulieribus historiography (for the Monk's Tale and the Legend of Good Women, respectively), and also his Decameron; aspects of Dante's Commedia; Petrarch. We will consider and compare attitudes to pagan antiquity in Chaucer and the Italians, taking some points of departure from Kenelm Foster's The Two Dantes. We will also survey the field of contemporary Chaucer criticism. Each member of the seminar will have the opportunity to survey a particular subfield or topic and then to make a class report. Chaucer is so capacious that a vast range of critical and scholarly interests may be pursued. These might include theories of dreams; literary theory; rhetorica; diets and bodily regimens; English and continental identities and locations; multilingualism; gender theory; lyrics, lyricism, and music; saints' lives and hagiography; alchemy; chivalry; representations of Judaism and Islam; the Orient; the visual arts (with comparative reference to Netherlandish painting, up to Brueghel and Bosch); the evolution of parliament and parliamentary procedure; the English Rising of 1381 (and comparable popular rebellions in Paris and Florence); Paris and the Hundred Years' War; Prague as Europe's most sophisticated and complex city; Anne of Bohemia, queen to Richard II; London; the division of urban labor; manuscript production (with several local texts to ponder); early printed editions of Chaucer; uses of Chaucer in Reformation debate and polemic. This course will concentrate chiefly on the period of Chaucer's lifetime, 1343-1400. But folks wishing to stretch to a later period, especially the Renaissance, can bid for class and curricular time. Students are of course free to work on whatever topic they choose for their research paper. The instructor takes particular interest in contemporary neo-Chaucerian performances by sound poet Caroline Bergvall, Af-Am poet Marilyn Nelson, Chaucer rapper Baba Brinkman, bard of Brooklyn Charles Bernstein, and operatic librettist Wendy Steiner (premiering her Loathly Lady at Penn in spring 2009). These will not feature much in this particular class, but independent pursuit of such interests will be encouraged. This course may interest some Comp Litters; it is designed chiefly for hardcore medievalists, Renaissance allies, and the fascinated few.

Examination: by one long essay with research component.


Germanic Languages & Literatures:


No listings available.



History:


HIST 201.301
The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
M 2:00-4:30
Edward Peters

SEM Pre-1800 (Fulfills pre-1800 requirement for majors)

The idea of applying a term ("Renaissance") that had long been associated with intellectual and artistic movements, largely in Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to an earlier and equally consequential period of European history was popularized by the book that gives this course its title, published by Charles Homer Haskins in 1927 (although the term had been used earlier). Scholars have long debated (and continue to debate)the appropriateness of: a) using the term at all for any period; b)using it for any period other than sixteenth-century Italy; c) using if for the 12th century, and d) why not use it for other periods, too (e.g., the Carolingian Renaissance, the 10th-century Renaissance, &c.). This course will look at the book, the debates, and especially (mostly) at the "long twelfth century" (= 1050-1215)and what we can make it out to have been and attempting to get at it on its own terms and discovering its own great riches.

Course requirements: three short (10-page) essays, mostly based on original material in translation and selected scholarly commentary.


HIST 201.302
The Abbey of Saint-Denis and Early Medieval France
T 1:30-4:30
Thomas Waldman

SEM Pre-1800 (Fulfills pre-1800 requirement for majors)

Because possibly no abbey played a more central role in French history than that of Saint-Denis, the burial place of the French kings on the outskirts of Paris, this course will place the history of the abbey itself within the broader context of French history. Our central focus will be the abbey in the 12th century, as the writings of Abbot Suger (1122-51) about the building of the new abbey church as well as his life of King Louis VI provide a unique source in monastic history. However, we will begin by looking at the legends surrounding St. Denis, the apostle to the Franks (martyred at Montmartre), the foundation of the abbey under King Dagobert, and the extraordinary importance of the monastery and its growth under the Carolingian emperors Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald. After briefly discussing the calamities of the 10th century, we will focus on the remarkable recovery in the late 11th and 12th. Here we will discuss the new abbey church that Suger built: its architecture, stained glass, sculptural program, manuscripts, liturgy and liturgical objects, as well as the political and economic developments that made such a magnificent monument possible.

Students will be required to give two oral reports and write a research paper. The syllabus will focus on Suger's writings, a survey of French history, and selected articles.


HIST 201.401
Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism and Christianity
W 3:30-6:30
Y. Schur

This course compares Jewish and Christian traditions and practices of care for the dead. While Jews and Christians developed different mortuary and commemorative traditions, common origins, contact between Jews and Christians, and familiarity with norms and practices of the 'other' make the comparative study of both traditions enlightening. The course includes such topics as burial rites and cemeteries, the care for the dead in the aftermath of violence, mourning and commemorative practices, and death and the afterlife.
Cross-listed with JWST 201, RELS 233


HIST 211
Medieval Lives
Jessica Goldberg

SEM Pre-1800 (Fulfills pre-1800 requirement for majors) Benjamin Franklin Seminar

What constitutes a life worth recording? What do you need to know about the life of another to understand it, to use it as a model (or a warning)? The medieval answers to these questions are often very different from our own, and different in turn from those of the ancient Romans. In this course, we explore both how medieval people lived, and how they thought they should live. Principally, we will be reading a variety of biographies and autobiographies from the medieval world-lives of saints and scoundrels, peasants, and kings, warriors and weepers. But we will also be reading ancient biography, modern biography and memoir, and modern biographies of medieval people to consider the differences in how we understand notions of self and the value of individual experience.


HIST 219
Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity--See SLAV/RUSS 234


HIST 306
Mediterranean World, 1000-1300
TR 3:00-4:30
Jessica Goldberg

A medieval ship plying the Mediterranean was often a frail thing: as a paying customer, might find yourself helping to bail for eight days only to be dumped back on the coast where you started. In this course, we explore a period when increasingly, everyone, from every side of the Mediterranean, whatever the danger, was on the sea. Whether it is Maimonides fleeing Spain to become chief judge in Cairo, Richard the king of England conquering Cyprus but not quite getting to Jerusalem, Marco Polo seeking his fortune but telling his tales from prison in Genoa, a Parisian scholar traveling to Spain to learn the science of the Arabs, a work-a-day Arab businessman trying to get a shipment of cheese from Sicily to Alexandria, or maybe just a black rat carrying the plague, we will be looking at the reasons and ways people and things were on the sea. We will also look at what happened when cultures that mostly ignored each others' existence came into constant contact across and around the Mediterranean.


HIST 308
Renaissance Europe
TR 10:30-12:00
Ann Moyer

Fulfills Sector II: History and Tradition
This course will examine the cultural and intellectual movement known as the Renaissance, from its origins in fourteenth-century Italy to its diffusion into the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century. We will trace the great changes in the world of learning and letters, the visual arts, and music, along with those taking place in politics, economics, and social organization. We will be reading primary sources as well as modern works.


HIST 408
The World of Dante
T 1:30-4:30
Edward Peters

SEM Pre-1800 (Fulfills pre-1800 requirement for majors);
Cross-cultural Analysis for Class of '10 and after

This course will consider from as many angles as possible the life, world, and work of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a Florentine and Tuscan citizen, exile, war hero, political figure, poet, philosopher, and theologian, and the world in which he lived and travelled and thought about. We will use both Dante's own writings (especially the Comedy and the Monarchia) and the writings of other contemporaries and near-contemporaries, as well as a respectable amount of respectable scholarship. The chronological range of the course (it might be called the "long" thirteenth century) runs from 1215 (the 4th Lateran Council, among other things) to just after Dante's death in 1321 (with a bit at the end about his later reputation and his bones).

Course requirements: Two essays or around 15 pp. each, one dealing with a thirteenth-century problem as Dante perceived it and the other a problem in Dante that depends on understanding his own world. There is some leeway on these. Graduate students in the course will have a bit more work to do.


HIST 523
The Religious "Other" in the Lives & Cultures of Medieval Jews, Christians & Muslims
M 2:00-5:00
Talya Fishman

Cross-cultural Analysis for Class of '10 and after

Course will explore attitudes toward monotheists of other faiths and claims made about these "religious Others" in real and imagined encounters between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages. Strategies of "othering" to be analyzed -- claims about the Other's body, habits and beliefs -- include those found in works of law, theology, literature, art and polemics. Attention will be paid to cases of cross-cultural influence, both conscious and unconscious. Primary sources will be provided in English, but student research papers should utilize primary sources in their original languages. Undergraduates require instructor's permission.

Cross-listed with COML 527, HEBR 583, JWST 523, RELS 523



History of Art:


ARTH 009
Writing about Reading Penn's Illuminated Manuscripts
W 2:00-5:00
Robert A. Maxwell

Freshman Critical Writing Seminar

Did you ever want to hold a priceless 600-year old book in your hands and leaf through its pages? Here's your chance. In this seminar focusing on one of Penn's most treasured illuminated manuscripts, a private 15th-century prayer book, we will become medieval readers as we read its texts and images. Yet what does it mean to read a medieval image? How can we interpret the images through the text, and vice versa? To answer these questions, we will put ourselves in the position of medieval readers as we try, just as they did, to decipher the meaning of the manuscripts paintings. The course will include a basic introduction to illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. We will focus, however, on writing about Penn's manuscript: writing about the images, about the text, and about the experience (alienating, uncanny, frightening, or familiar?) of writing about reading. This course will emphasize short writing assignments, as well as in-class writing and peer-review assignments. Final portfolios will include students' analyses of individual sections of the manuscript

Cross-listed with WRIT 015-401


ARTH 241
Byzantine Art & Architecture
TR 9:00-10:30
Robert Ousterhout

This course surveys the arts of Byzantium from the fall of Rome to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Study of major monuments, including icons, mosaics, architecture, and ivories will provide us with an overview of this rich artistic culture. We will pay special attention to the role of the Orthodox Church and liturgy in the production and reception of art works. Weekly recitation sections will focus on selected major issues, such as the relationship of art to the Holy, the uses and abuses of Iconoclasm, and imperial patronage. The course will also grapple with the Empire's relationship to other cultures by looking at the impact of the Christian Crusades and Moslem invasions - as well as Byzantium's crucial impact on European art (e.g., in Sicily, Spain).


ARTH 242
Medieval Architecture
MWF 11:00-12:00
Robert A. Maxwell

This course provides an introduction to the built environment of the Middle Ages. From the fall of Rome to the dawn of the Renaissance, a range of architectural styles shaped medieval daily life, religious experience and civic spectacle. We will become familiar with the architectural traditions of the great cathedrals, revered pilgrimage churches, and reclusive monasteries of western Europe, as well as castles, houses, and other civic structures. We will integrate the study of the architecture and with the study of medieval culture, exploring the role of pilgrimage, courts and civil authority, religious reform and radicalism, crusading and social violence, and rising urbanism. In this way, we will explore the ways in which the built environment profoundly affected contemporary audiences and shaped medieval life.


ARTH 301.304
The Moving Image in the Middle Ages
M 2:00-5:00
P. Chatterjee


ARTH 417
Later Islamic Art & Architecture
MW 3:30-5:00
Renata Hood

Istanbul, Samarkand, Isfahan, Cairo, and Delhi as major centers of art production in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Attention will be given to urban and architectural achievement as well as to the key monuments of painting and metalwork -- the visual environment of the "gunpowder empires."


ARTH 742
Form and Meaning in Medieval Architecture
Time TBA
Robert Ousterhout

This seminar asks the basic question: If architecture is a bearer of meaning, what is its vocabulary, and how does it communicate? Focusing on (but not limited to) the medieval (i.e., Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, Romanesque) monuments of Jerusalem and their progeny, we will address various methods of analysis that have been proposed, beginning with Richard Krautheimer's seminal "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Medieval Architecture.'



Jewish Studies:


JWST 100.401
The Binding of Isaac
TR 1:30-3:00
David Stern

Benjamin Franklin Seminar. Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (all classes).
The Akeidah, or the Binding of Isaac, as told in Genesis 22, is one of the great Biblical stories and the foundation for one of the great themes of Western religion, the near-sacrifice and restoration of the beloved son. The story is also one of the most problematic texts in all Biblical literature, and a source for countless later tales and re-imaginings in later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature. In this course, we will study the history of this tale and its theme from the Bible through the modern period in order to show how a Biblical tradition develops and changes in response to historical change. The focus will be on Jewish tradition but we will also consider Christian and Islamic parallels because, as we shall see, no religious tradition in Western culture has ever developed in a vacuum. In this way, we will also attempt to understand the very nature of Tradition--the process by which the past is received and handed on to future generations--as it figures in Judaism and Western culture in general.

Cross-listed with NELC 252, RELS 129


JWST 258.401
Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism and Christianity--See HIST 201.401


JWST 258.401
The Passover Haggadah
TR 4:30-6:00
David Stern

Fulfills and General Requirement III: Arts & Letters - Class of '09 and prior.

In this course we will study the literary structure of the Haggadah, and its historical development from the Bible down to contemporary times, with a view to understanding how this fascinating text, its meaning as a religious ritual, and the meaning of the Exodus and redemption have changed in the course of Jewish history. Readings will include, in addition to the Haggadah itself, selections from the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds, medieval Geniza fragments and commentaries on the Haggadah, and modern revisions of the traditional text. We will also consider the history of the Haggadah as a book, and in particular the role that artistic illustration has played in its career as a book. The ability to read unpointed Hebrew texts is required for the course. Although students need have no previous coursework in Rabbinic literature, nor any particular liking for matzah, this course is designed for students who are able to read classical Hebrew and wish to be introduced to the modern historical-critical study of classical Jewish literature. Seminar.

Cross-listed with HEBR 258, RELS 228, FOLK 258


JWST 523
The Religious "Other" in the Lives & Cultures of Medieval Jews, Christians & Muslims--See HIST 523



Linguistics:


No listings available.



Music:


No listings available.



Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations:


NELC 130
Introduction to the Qur'an
J. Lowry

Humanities & Social Science Sector, Class of 2010 and after

The goal of this course is to provide students with a general introduction to the holy scripture of the religion of Islam, the Qur'an. In particular, students will become familiar with various aspects of Qur'anic content and style, the significance of the Qur'an in Islamic tradition and religious practice, scholarly debates about the history of its text, and contempory interpretations of it. Through close readings of a wide range of passages and short research assignments, students will gain first-hand knowledge of the Qur'an's treatment of prophecy, law, the Biblical tradition, and many other topics. No previous background in Islamic studies or Arabic language is required for this course.

Cross-listed with RELS 140


NELC 115
Persian Mystical Thought: Rumi
T 1:30-4:30
Pardis Minuchehr

Dist Cr Arts & Letters-CL of 09 & Prior

This course examines the works and ideas of the thirteenth century sufi and founder of the Mevlevi order, Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Although Rumi composed his mystical poetry in Persian, numerous translations in a multitude of languages have made this poet an international personality. In this course, we will examine Rumi's original mystical vocabulary and allegorical style in English translations. We will also look at Rumi's reception in different parts of the world, especially in America, where he has been on the best-seller lists for a decade.

Cross-listed with RELS 144/544 and COML 114


NELC 252
The Binding of Isaac--See JWST 100.401



Religious Studies:


RELS 140
Introduction to the Qur'an--See NELC 130


RELS 144/544
Persian Mystical Thought: Rumi--See NELC 115


RELS 219
The Binding of Isaac--See JWST 100.401


RELS 228
The Passover Haggadah--See JWST 258.401


RELS 233
Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism and Christianity--See HIST 201.401


RELS 523
The Religious "Other" in the Lives & Cultures of Medieval Jews, Christians & Muslims--See HIST 523



Romance Languages & Literatures:


ITAL 534
Women in Poetry. From the Trobairitz to the Petrarchans
TR 4:00-6:00
Victoria Kirkham

This course presents poetry by women and about women. The first half will trace a Romance lyric tradition from the 12th-c. Provencal troubadours and their female counterparts, the /trobairitz/, into the Sicilian School of the Duecento, the Tuscan Dolce Stil Novo, Dante's early Stony Rhymes," and Petrarch's 14th-c. love poetry. The second half of the course will be dovoted to Renaissance lyric, when Petrarchism becomes a European fashion, producing numerous polyvocal anthologies, or "virtual salons." We shall consider how Petrarch's "Scattered Rhymes" undergo a transformation in /Petrarchismo/, why this literary mode makes possible a flowering of poetry by women, how the women adapt a first-person male lyric voice to their own purposes (as maiden, wife, widow, courtisan, virtuosa), and how they gain acceptance by the male establishment (e.g., Bembo, Della Casa, Michelangelo, Varchi, Bronzino, Cellini) in the art of poetry as "epistolary" exchange, or dialogue, linking members of a cultural community. Our female authors will include Vittoria Colonna, Chiara Matraini, Tullia d'Aragona, Isabella di Morra, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, and Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati. Their varying critical reception will raise larger questions: how do women enter a national literary history? Is their presence less stable than that of male authors? Do all-female canons reflect lines of literary influence or do they relegate women to a kind of virtual matroneum that segregates and diminishes the female voice?

Cross-listed as COML 534, GSOC 534.401


SPAN 330
Medieval Language, Literature and Culture in the Age of Alfonso X, El Sabio
TR 10:30-12:00
Michael Solomon

This course explores the extraordinary 13th century, an age of novelty and innovation that gave birth to the Spanish language and the first Spanish literary works. Focusing on the Castilian monarch, Alfonso X, and his astonishing literary and cultural production, we will examine the development of Spanish from Latin and the rising use of Spanish as a political, judicial, and scientific medium for organizing the new Christian kingdoms in Spain. As background we will read selections of works from the Mester de clerezia tradition, including El libro de Alexandre and Berceo's Milagros de Santa Maria. The course culminates in an extensive study of Alfonso's remarkable Codice Rico-a collection of over 200 narrative songs retelling the Virgin Mary's miracles, each illuminated with richly detailed images depicting all aspects of medieval life and culture.
Prerequisite(s): Spanish 219.




Slavic Studies:


RUSS 234
Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity
TR 4:30-6:00
Julia Verkholantsev

Fulfills Distribution II, History & Tradition (Class of '09 and prior)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)

This course offers an overview of the cultural history of Rus' from its origins to the eighteenth century, a period that laid the foundation for the Russian Empire. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the evolution of the main cultural paradigms of Russian Orthodoxy viewed in a broader European context. Although this course is historical in content, it is also about modern Russia. The legacy of Medieval Rus' is still referenced, often allegorically, in contemporary social and cultural discourse as the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian societies attempt to reconstruct and reinterpret their histories. In this course, students learn that the study of the medieval cultural and political history explains many aspects of modern Russian society, its culture and mentality. All readings and lectures in English

Cross-listed with COML 235, HIST 219, SLAV 517


SLAV 517
Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity--See SLAVIC/RUSS 234