Expected Option Paper schedules for the academic year 2009-2010
The title of each Option Paper is followed by an indication the subject area which "owns" the paper, that is the Faculty or Department whose assessment procedures will apply for submission deadlines, examination dates, and marking criteria. This information is followed by the name of the class convenor who will be best place to answer specific queries on teaching and assessment. – Certain options, particularly literature-based ones, will only be open to candidates who fulfill relevant criteria of linguistic or other competence; option convenors will be happy to advise on this.
(a) Michaelmas Term
Aquinas - Advanced Reading Class
(Subject area: Theology / Convenor: Dr Vivian Boland, Director of the Aquinas Institute)
Participants study a selection of texts from the writings of Thomas Aquinas with close examination of the arguments in key passages. Texts are chosen from different moments of his writing career, and from different kinds of writing, so that participants
• become familiar with the range of writing forms available to a 13th century Latin scholastic
• evaluate the rationale for each form and consider its rhetorical and pedagogical effectiveness
• appreciate some major concerns of Aquinas’s intellectual and cultural context
- Bibliography
Chaucer and London literature [not available in 2009/10]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Marion Turner)
This course centres on the textual, political, and social world of London and Westminster in the 1380s and 90s, examining Chaucer’s texts as products of a complex and conflicted historical moment. We look at Chaucer’s poems alongside other contemporary literary texts such as St Erkenwald and the Boke of Cupide, and in relation to sources including chronicles, appeals, and pamphlets. Chaucer’s politically-engaged scribes and early readers are another focus of interest. Each week we will focus on a theme: New Troy, the Peasants’ Revolt, Literature and Parliament, Literature and Patronage, Scribes and Guilds, and Slander, Insults, and Disputes. We will range widely in Chaucer’s works, paying particular attention to Troilus and Criseyde, the short poems, the Parliament of Fowls, and the House of Fame.
- Bibliography
King Alfred and his circle: history, literature and philosophy at the Alfredian court and after
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Professor Malcolm Godden)
The picture of Alfredian cultural activity has been changing rapidly in recent years, and this option will give an opportunity to analyse recent developments in views of the Alfredian writings and their contemporary context, and particularly to examine the ways in which they seek to appropriate and transform late Roman culture for a new age. The texts will be studied in Old English and the course assumes some knowledge of the language. There is a lot of reading in primary texts, but there will be a concurrent class for beginners in Old English (not for assessment) and anyone who is keen to take this course and hasn’t studied Old English should contact Professor Godden.
- Bibliography
The language of Middle English literature [not available in 2009/10]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Simon Horobin)
This course will provide students with the necessary linguistic background to appreciate the stylistic practices of major Middle English writers such as Chaucer, Langland and the Gawain-poet. Following an introduction to key features of orthography, phonology, grammar and lexicon, students will examine language use, style and variety to consider how these writers exploited the resources of Middle English to achieve specific literary and stylistic effects.
- Bibliography
Literature after the Conquest
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Laura Ashe)
This course will consider the dramatic literary developments of the post-Conquest period, in terms of the cultural, political and ideological challenges of Norman England. It will include the birth of the romance genre, the development of fictional narrative, the rewriting and colonization of English history, and the emergence of such cultural phenomena as chivalry and the elevation of heterosexual love. Texts considered will include Latin, insular French and Old and Middle English (all of which can be studied in parallel text and translation): chronicles, lives of saints and kings, foundation myths and pseudo-histories; insular and continental romances and lais, such as the various versions of the Tristan legend, the Arthurian romance, and the romances of 'English' history; and some documentary and art historical evidence.
- Bibliography
Piers Plowman and contemporary discourses
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Professor Ralph Hanna)
This course will explore a reading of Piers Plowman against its relevant social contexts and their representations elsewhere in contemporary literature. For some hints of directions the class might go, see Ralph Hanna, London Literature, 1300-1380 (Cambridge, 2005), chapters 4-6.
- Bibliography
Older Scots Literature (to 1550)
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Sally Mapstone)
This course will focus on the Scottish literature composed between c.1375 and c.1550. The options for study are diverse, and range from major historical works such as The Bruce and The Wallace, to the writings of Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay. There will be the opportunity to concentrate on the wealth of anonymous writing from the period, and its manuscript contexts, and to examine the development of popular genres including romance, tale collection and dream vision.
- Bibliography
Chaucer before the Tales
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Professor Vincent Gillespie)
A close look at the poems written by Chaucer up to the mid 1380s, including The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women. The course will explore Chaucer’s experiments with form and style, and the gradual evolution of his poetic theory. The Riverside Chaucer will be the course text.
- Bibliography
(b) Hilary Term
Reading the Pearl-poet
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Mr A.V.C. Schmidt)
This course will provide an opportunity to study the works of MS Cotton Nero A.x and also St Erkenwald in their literary, artistic, social and theological context, and to consider the relevance of medieval aesthetic thinking on Measure and Light for the interpretation of these remarkable (as yet anonymous) Ricardian masterpieces.
- Bibliography
Arthurian texts: from 'History' to Malory [not available in 2009/10]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Carolyne Larrington)
This course outlines Arthurian tradition from the king’s first appearance in Insular chronicle and the defining biography in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittonum, through the development of the single-knight adventure in French romance, to the great English romances of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century Arthuriad. We will explore changing ideas of kingship and chivalry, and the treatment of women and of the clerical class across the medieval period.
- Bibliography
Form and Reform in the Long Fifteenth Century [not available in 2009/10]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Mishtooni Bose)
The purpose of this course is to conduct focused exploration of the ways in which religious orthodoxy remodelled itself in the aftermath of the Wycliffite controversies, and the consequences of that process for the writing of poetry in English. The course explicitly engages with very recent scholarship in this field, including a new edition of John Audelay’s poems and an accompanying volume of critical essays by leading scholars (both set for publication in autumn 2008); and studies by, for example, John Bowers and Karen Winstead on the different literate practices available to readers and writers in English during this period. Although the syllabus as given here invokes some very broad categories, reading will be tightly focused, particularly in the early weeks, in order to provide students with the means to construct their own critical narratives of this contested period in English literary history:
Historical context: the Council of Constance
Literary context: Antagonistic traditions? The Chaucer and Langland legacies
“The Council of Conscience”: The poetry of John Audelay
“Open Shrifte”: Thomas Hoccleve’s Series and its contexts
John Capgrave: hagiography and the making of orthodoxy
John Skelton: unmaking orthodoxy?
- Bibliography
Old Norse Literature [with language classes in MT]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Heather O'Donoghue)
This course is designed to be flexible enough to meet two needs. On the one hand, beginners in Old Norse will be introduced to a varied range of Old Norse Icelandic prose and poetry, and be encouraged to set these texts in their historical and cultural contexts. On the other, those who have already studied some Old Norse will be able to focus on texts directly relevant or complementary to their own interests and expertise. (Language classes in Old Norse can be arranged in Michaelmas Term; students planning to take this option and needing to learn Old Norse from scratch should contact Dr O’Donoghue as soon as possible, preferably in the early part of the summer vacation).
- Bibliography
Old English and Old Norse Heroic Literature [with possibility of language classes in MT]
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Heather O’Donoghue)
This course will consider texts in Old English and Old Norse which might be termed “heroic”, either because their subject matter pertains to the so-called “heroic age” – texts such as Widsith, Beowulf, or Deor; the poems of the Poetic Edda – or because their subject matter is treated in what might be called a “heroic” manner: such texts might include The Battle of Maldon, Exodus; certain Old Norse sagas, or Old Norse praise poetry. The aim will be to range as widely as possible in either or both traditions; there will be the opportunity (but no necessity) to compare and contrast them. Texts will be studied in the original language(s). (Language classes in Old Norse and Old English can be arranged in Michaelmas Term; students planning to take this option should contact Dr O’Donoghue, preferably in the early part of the summer, to discuss necessary provision).
- Bibliography
Early Middle English Devotional Writing for Women
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Annie Sutherland)
This course focuses on the thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse. A text of guidance for women embarking upon lives of anchoritic solitude, Ancrene Wisse will be considered alongside the closely associated texts of the Katherine Group (the lives of saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana, in addition to Sawles Warde and Hali Meiðhad) and the Wooing Group (a series of lyrical meditations on Christ and the Virgin Mary). The course will provide scope for close readings of the texts in their manuscript context, and will also encourage broader investigations which might include (although need not be confined to)
- sources and background
- ways of reading invited by the texts
- later uses and adaptations of the texts
- male authors, female readers
- Bibliography
Encountering Langland: Matter, Form and Spirit in Piers Plowman
(Subject area: English / Convenor: Dr Carl Schmidt)
This course will deal with Piers Plowman as a poem of ‘encounters’: face-to-face conflicts and engagements, rebuffs, defeats and recoveries, that constitute a paradigm of the individual and collective Christian ordeal in time. The Dreamer’s numerous encounters with personages from Holy Church to Antichrist, and centrally with Piers Plowman, cover the whole range of ‘medled’ human experience of grace and guile that constitute man’s world. These encounters reveal the ways in which the underlying reality of being is discovred through grasping the structure of the material world (the physical elements, the body, the senses), its form (rationally ordered as plenitude) and its teleological purpose (the spiritual significance of creation as ground for a sacramental art).
The six sessions will be based on the B Version, studied in the context of the earlier and later versions, with special reference to changes in the C Version. The two-volume Parallel-Text Edition ed. Schmidt is recommended for use (copies available in English Faculty Library).
- Bibliography
Saints and sanctity in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages
(Subject area: History / Convenors: Mr Bryan Ward-Perkins and Dr Neil McLynn)
Saints, alive and dead, played a central role in medieval society. This course examines the emergence of the cult of the saint in late Antiquity, and its remarkable spread over subsequent centuries. Live saints reinforced the Christian message and helped the faithful with the travails of daily life, but also represented a challenge to the authority of the established Church. Dead, their cults and their relics spread through the Christian world, encouraging, in a few notable cases, a steady stream of visitors to their graves. This course is centred around the rich, diverse, and often beautifully written hagiography of the fourth to ninth centuries, both from the Mediterranean region and from northern Europe. It offers an opportunity to examine, across several centuries, a wide range of themes: the fascination with martyrdom; different types of sanctity (such as those available only to bishops, or to women); the role of the saint within society and within the Church; the emergence of different styles of asceticism and spirituality, from Byzantium to Ireland; how a saint was acclaimed and accepted in a period without formal processes of canonization; the extraordinary power of relics, and the attraction of pilgrimage; the often underhand ‘translation’ of holy bodies; and, finally, even the existence of doubters.
The twelfth-century renaissance
(Subject area: History / Convenors: Dr Matthew Kempshall and Dr Gervase Rosser)
The Twelfth-Century Renaissance is an interdisciplinary paper in intellectual history designed to give students a broad overview of the content and applications of learning in the twelfth century. It will therefore cover a wide range of different curricular subjects from the perspective both of their sources (the classical textual tradition of ninth-century learning; the impact of newly translated texts; the consequences of personal contact with Muslim and Jewish scholars in Sicily and the Iberian peninsula; the influence of empirical discovery) and their application through cathedral schools and royal courts to society at large. The course will comprise eight classes, organised around the seven liberal arts (the trivium and the quadrivium) and the three higher faculties of the medieval schools. 1. An introduction to modern historiography on the subject, from C.H.Haskins through to Richard Southern, Beryl Smalley and, most recently, Stephen Jaeger. 2. The trivium part I (an introduction to Aristotle and Cicero on the subjects of dialectic and rhetoric; the controversy over their relationship as highlighted by John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon). 3. The trivium part II (an introduction to grammar and, in particular, to the forms of poetry and historiography through which it was studied; the controversy over the relationship between history, ‘fiction’ and fable which developed as a result of the emergence of vernacular romance). 4. The quadrivium (an introduction to the subjects of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music and concentrating in particular on Platonism and the ‘school’ of Chartres as exemplified by William of Conches’ Dragmaticon). 5. Theology (the impact of the liberal arts on the systematic study of theology, starting with Anselm and Abelard and continuing through Peter Lombard to the school of Saint Victor). 6. Law (the systematisation of canon and Roman law and its impact, via Gratian and Bologna, on the exercise of both ecclesiastical and temporal authority). 7. Medicine (the influence of Galen at the ‘school’ of Salerno and its relationship both to astrology and to medical practice). 8. The ‘mechanical’ arts, focussing in particular on architecture and navigation and their respective relationship to cathedral-building and the use of the astrolabe.
The Use of English and the Public Sphere, c. 1300 to c. 1550
(Subject area: History / Convenors: Dr Ian Forrest, Dr Benjamin Thompson, and Dr John Watts)
From early in the fourteenth century, the English vernacular became an increasingly important medium of public expression. It was richly, if variously, conceptualised – as the vehicle of national identity, as the rough language of ‘lewed folk’, or as the ‘common vois’ of the realm – and it was growing in vocabulary, in uniformity and in the range of written and spoken forms in which it could be used. By the end of the century, a supple literary English had been developed to rival Italian and French, ways of using English to express religious teaching had been found and exploited, and a formalised Chancery English, for use in the communications of government, was about to emerge. Skills of reading and writing were becoming more widespread in society, consciousness of the power of public writing was almost universal and awareness of the rhetorical possibilities and socio-political implications of the new vernacular was spreading. These developments were full of importance for the public aspects of contemporary life. While Habermas’ notion of a ‘public sphere’ raises a cloud of problems for medieval historians, most of us would accept that in these centuries, some kind of ‘public’ existed, and that the English vernacular rapidly became one of its most important and legitimate media. This course aims to explore the implications of that central cultural, social and political development. Although its importance has long been recognised by scholars of Middle English literature, it is a relatively new area of concern for the mainstream historians of the period, and one which opens up new possibilities for the understanding of later medieval political culture, religion and social interaction. Among the issues to be explored in the seminars for this course will be:
• The meaning and measuring of literacy
• The ‘public’ as concept and reality
• The conceptualisation of the vernacular and its significance
• Literary English and social English (perhaps involving some thinking about the relationship between historical and literary approaches to the ‘rise of English’)
• The use of French and Latin in a vernacular age
• The circulation of written materials (manuscripts and the book trade)
• ‘Lollardy and Literacy’: religious instruction in the vernacular
• Bills, libels and pamphlets: vernacular politics
• The vernacular transmission of notions of society
• A new paradigm: problems of methodology and integration with mainstream understanding.
(c) Option Papers not yet scheduled for a particular term
At least two of the options listed for each major subject area will be available in each academic year. Modern Languages Special Subjects can only be taught once a year. While we would endeavour to allow as much student choice as possible, please note that it may only feasible to arrange teaching in the term which would suit the majority (but not all) of the candidates on relevant master's programmes. – Most subject areas also allow for the possibility to devise a Special Subject of the candidate's own choosing, provided the academic case for the choice is supported by the programme convenor, and subject to available teaching resources and approval by the relevant Academic Policy or Graduate Studies Committee.
Magic and witchcraft in medieval western Christendom
(Subject area: Theology / Convenor: Dr Eva De Visscher)
The history of magic is closely linked with the histories of religion and science, and what exactly constitutes ‘magical practices’ depends very much on the historical and geographical context in which they are believed to occur. This paper examines the role of magic and witchcraft in medieval Latin Christian society from the tenth to the fourteenth century. Using a diversity of primary sources, ranging from canon law texts and ecclesiastical treatises to manuals for the conjuration of demons, it aims to explore what people at the time perceived to be magic, how they legislated and tried to protect themselves against it, and how, and for what purpose, they attempted to practice it. This course will study the traditions (biblical, classical, Jewish and pre-Christian) underlying medieval concepts of magic and the different ‘branches’ of magic, such as alchemy, necromancy, witchcraft and magical medicine. It will offer discussion on medieval perceptions of the witch figure and on the boundaries between the magical and the miraculous.
Roman de la Rose
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - French / Convenor: Dr Helen Swift)
The Rose is, perhaps, the single most important literary work of the French Middle Ages; we have scarcely begun to measure its fundamental importance for everything written in its wake in France, and beyond. This course will concentrate first on the Rose itself and address questions of ideology, philosophy, eroticism, and literary technique; it will also look at the repercussions of the Rose, and offer opportunities, among other things, for original research into the intertextualities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
- Bibliography
Women and Medieval Literatures
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - French / Convenor: Dr Sophie Marnette)
Although most medieval texts were seemingly written by men and some of them with a fairly misogynistic bias, women were absolutely central to Medieval French Literature. The focus of this course will be twofold. In the first place, it will examine gender issues and women's status in the work of French medieval women writers (such as Marie de France and Christine de Pisan). In the second place, it will envisage the place of women in male-authored texts, whether as characters, patrons or addressees of lyric poems.
- Bibliography
Women’s writing in thirteenth and fourteenth century Germany
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - German / Convenor: Dr Annette Volfing)
Women’s writing in this period consists mostly of mystical revelations, (auto)biographical writings and religious poetry. Important areas of study that have not firmly established themselves in the literary canon are the Fließendes Licht der Gottheit of Mechthild von Magdeburg and the ‘Nonnenviten’ lives of nuns from S.W. German Dominican convents. The course offers scope for the investigation of questions of genre, public and private dimensions of literature, the reception of women’s writing, as well as gender specific aspects of female authorship. The course is planned on the basis of German texts, but it is also possible to study this option on the basis of a combination of Latin and German material.
- Bibliography
Byzantine historiography in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Byzantine Greek / Convenor: Professor M.D. Lauxtermann)
The writing of history, whether narratives or annalistic chronicles, is one of the strengths of the Byzantine literary tradition, from the fourth century through to the fifteenth. The eleventh and twelfth centuries, a period of civic turmoil followed by stability and prosperity, was also a period of intellectual vigour in many fields, including historiography. This course will focus on Psellos, courtier, statesman and polymath of the late eleventh century, and contrast his approaches to those of, for example, Skylitzes and Attaliates. From the twelfth century, the course will consider first the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, contrasted with the histories composed by her husband the general Nikephoros Bryennios and the bureaucrat-monk Zonaras, and then the writers who dealt with the reign of Manuel Komneos - John Kinnamos and Niketas Choniates. Aspects of these texts that could be covered would include discussion of their narrative structures, their focus, their use of rhetorical techniques as well as their relationship to other literary currents of the period.
- Bibliography
The Cantigas de Santa Maria
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Portuguese / Convenor: Dr Stephen Parkinson)
The 420 songs in praise of the Virgin Mary, compiled in the second half of the 13th century by and for Alfonso X (‘the Learned’), King of Castile, and preserved in four richly decorated manuscripts, are a treasure trove of poetry, music, and art, and offer unparalleled opportunities for literary, cultural, and artistic research. This course will focus on the processes of composition of the individual poems, and the compilation of the collections in which the Cantigas are incorporated.
- Bibliography
Problems in Dante interpretation
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Italian / Convenor: Dr Manuele Gragnolati)
All of Dante’s works pose challenges to the reader and have led to diverse, often conflicting critical and scholarly interpretations. This course offers the student the opportunity to concentrate on central issues in the Divina commedia, but also to look at other works if desired. Problems that will be given particular attention include allegory, imagery, dating, and Dante’s sources.
- Bibliography
German literature and the beginnings of printing
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - German / Convenor: Professor Nigel Palmer)
This subject is devised to open up an area of literary history that has received little attention, the German texts whose reception spanned the manuscript culture of the period 1440-60 and continued in the new medium after the invention of printing. The course addresses both medium-related issues such as the invention of printing with moveable type, wood-block printing and intermediate forms between manuscript and print, as well as providing scope for an investigation of the historical and social background.
- Bibliography
Middle High German romance
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - German / Convenor: Professor Nigel Palmer)
Courtly romance in medieval German spans the period from Lambrecht’s Alexander c. 1160 to the love romances of the later 13th and early fourteenth century. The course centres around Veldeke’s Eneide, the Arthurian and Grail romances of Hartmann and Wolfram, and Gottfried’s Tristan. Students are encouraged to tackle new texts not covered in their earlier studies, and to approach the texts with a diversity of methods ranging from more traditional literary approaches to gender issues and cultural history.
- Bibliography
Tradition and innovation in medieval lyric poetry
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Italian / Convenor: Dr Manuele Gragnolati)
Italian lyric poetry of the 13th and 14th century displays a remarkable talent for innovation which is carried out through constantly assimilating and reassessing ideas and techniques of preceding generations. Students will have the opportunity to examine the work of major figures from the Sicilians to Petrarch, including Dante and the stilnovisti, and also, if they wish, to explore lesser known names, such as the 13th-century Guittoniani or contemporaries of Petrarch such as Antonio da Ferrara.
- Bibliography
Chrétien de Troyes
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - French / Convenor: Dr Anthony Hunt)
The twelfth-century French author Chrétien de Troyes was one of the most influential figures in Western literature as his romances on the legend of King Arthur created themes and characters that endured to this day (the chivalric quest, the love of Lancelot for Guenièvre, the Graal as a sacred object). The course will focus on issues such as Chrétien's authorship, his art as storyteller, his handling of irony and ambiguity, his re-working of mythic themes and characters, etc. The course will also examine major themes underlying his texts (such as so-called courtly love, the representation of knighthood, the expression of moral standards, etc.).
- Bibliography
Christine de Pizan: ‘The First Lady of the Middle Ages’
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - French / Convenor: Dr Helen Swift)
Critical interest in this late-medieval author developed alongside, and bolstered by, the growth of feminist literary criticism, privileging her as, above all, a woman writer. More recent attempts to assess Christine primarily as a writer, and especially as a rewriter of different traditions, have opened up new and interesting questions about authorship and self-editing, patronage, intertextualities, and genre. Following in this vein, the course will take a comparative approach to Christine’s work, bringing together different texts from across her oeuvre, as well as situating her works in the context of other late-medieval writers.
- Bibliography
Classical and vernacular cultures in the Italian Renaissance
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Italian / Convenor: Professor Martin McLaughlin)
One of the major features of the Renaissance was the re-discovery by Italians of the classical world and its values. This course allows students to focus either on a single writer or on a range of writers (from Petrarch to Tasso) whose work was informed by classical culture, and to analyse the ways in which Greco-Roman ideas combined with the vernacular literary tradition to shape the subject-matter, form and style of the author(s).
- Bibliography
Biography and autobiography in the Italian Renaissance
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Italian / Convenor: Professor Martin McLaughlin)
Whether or not one agrees with Burckhardt’s thesis that the Renaissance was characterised by ‘The Rise of the Individual’, the fact remains that the period 1300-1600 witnessed an enormous interest in the writing of the individual life, both in Latin and the vernacular. In this course students can study some of the first modern autobiographies ever written (Petrarch, Alberti, Cellini) or examine some of the most important biographies of writers and artists from the earliest lives of Dante to Vasari’s lives of the artists.
- Bibliography
Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Renaissance epic
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Italian / Convenor: Dr Diego Zancani)
The central role of Ariosto’s poem in European literature, its various interpretations and its significance will be investigated in the context of other epic poems, especially Boiardo’s ‘Innamoramento di Orlando’ as well as of other literary works, especially from the Northern city of Ferrara.
- Bibliography
Myth, History, and the Construction of Identity in Medieval Iberia
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Spanish / Convenor: Dr Geraldine Coates)
This course will examine the re-imagining of the past in medieval epic and chronicle, with a view to exploring the ways in which the literary reconfiguration of history in these texts shapes the identities of their day, comprising ethnicity, gender, proto-nationalist sentiment, and religious affiliation. Close attention will be paid to the literary strategies which underpin the transformation of history, and to the creative interchange of history and myth. With close reference to the rich cultural background and political history of medieval Iberia, the course will also seek to understand the ideological foundations of the reconception of history.
- Bibliography
Inner self, subjectivity and symbolism in Spanish Sentimental Fiction
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Spanish / Convenor: Dr Juan-Carlos Conde)
The texts commonly referred to as "Sentimental Fiction", written between 1440 and 1548, share a common emphasis on the inner world of their characters: their feelings, their subjective vision of their own passions, and their experience of love. In the most relevant texts of this sub-genre the importance of symbolism is paramount, in most cases as a textual device able to emphasize the representation of the feelings and thoughts of their characters. This course will explore in depth the different ways in which the texts that constitute the sub-genre "Sentimental Fiction" use symbolism as an instrument for the expression of the feelings of their characters.
- Bibliography
Textual criticism, philology, and the editing of Hispanic medieval texts
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Spanish / Convenor: Dr Juan-Carlos Conde)
This course will explore, with a strongly practical component, the main problems posed by the editing of Hispanic medieval texts, and how textual criticism has, in different times and places, developed different text-editing methodologies. The link between textual criticism and philology – defined as a comprehensive textual, linguistic, and cultural approach to texts – will also be examined, as well as its implications for those interested in the editing of Hispanic medieval texts.
- Bibliography
Byzantine court poetry from the twelfth to the fourteenth century
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Byzantine Greek / Convenor: t.b.c.)
Throughout the Byzantine period the imperial court, with its potential for patronage and its need for ceremonial, was a focus for literary activity. At no time was this more apparent than in the last centuries, under the Comnenian and Palaeologan dynasties. This option will examine the poetry that was produced to celebrate emperors and members of their court for both public and private occasions: victory processions, receptions of foreign potentates, imperial weddings, imperial deaths. Written in an allusive code, this poetry can be unravelled to reveal complex literary techniques which reflect the long traditions of the genre, with its roots in classical antiquity; it also provides fascinating insights into the web of personal and diplomatic relationships at play in the court. Writers to be examined include Theodoros Prodromos, one of the most exciting writers of the twelfth century, his enigmatic contemporary Manganeios Prodromos, and from the fourteenth century Manuel Holobolos and the prolific Manuel Philes. The writers’ ceremonial verse will be contrasted with their poetry written for other environments.
- Bibliography
The Byzantine verse romances
(Subject area: Medieval and Modern Languages - Byzantine Greek / Convenor: t.b.c.)
Sustained fictional narratives are rarely found in Byzantine literature. Exceptions are the verse romances from the fourteenth century which tell of the adventures undergone by pairs of youthful lovers before all is resolved into a life of wedded bliss. With backgrounds that mix strands from classical antiquity, Constantinople and the Frankish West, these texts remain enigmatic and open to interpretation. Why do they appear at this time? Are they the product of Westernising aristocrats in Constantinople? Do they come from minor Frankish courts in the Peloponnese? Were their authors writing only within a literary culture, or were they open to influence from orally disseminated material? What narrative patterns can be discerned in their composition? What theoretical approaches might provide convincing insights into their nature? These and other issues will be explored in the reading of texts like the Achilleis, Velthandros and Chryzantza and the War of Troy.
- Bibliography
Jews and Christians in medieval Europe
(Subject area: Theology / Convenor: Dr Eva De Visscher)
[further details to follow]
- Bibliography
Music and liturgy in late-medieval choir schools
(Subject area: Music / Convenor: Professor Reinhard Strohm)
[currently under consideration]
- Bibliography
Medieval philosophy
(Subject area: Philosophy / Convenor: Dr Cecilia Trifogli)
It is envisaged that the classes will treat
the following topics of medieval philosophy:
• Universals
• Theory of Knowledge
• Natural Philosophy: Motion and Time
• Causality: Efficient and Final Cause
• Conceptions of the Soul
- Bibliography
