COURSE CONTENT

Core Courses

All students will follow four core courses in Michaelmas Term:

Research Methodology (27 hours)
Taught by: Helen Conrad-O’Briain (co-ordinator), Alice Jorgensen, John Scattergood.

This element will cover palaeography (notably bookhands from Early Insular to Anglicana and Secretary), codicology, bibliography, and textual criticism. If students require a particular training for historical texts, they may, at the discretion of the Department of Medieval History, be allowed to follow the palaeography and codicology elements of the M. Phil. in Medieval History. 

Before they start the course students should acquire: 
Brown, M. P., A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London, 1990);
Roberts , J., Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500  (London, 2005).

If they are intending to take Latin they should acquire:
George Sharpley, Teach Yourself Beginner’s Latin.

Nutricula

Medieval Thought (18 hours)
Taught by: Tim Jackson (co-ordinator), Corinna Salvadori Lonergan and Igor Candido.

This module will introduce important topics in medieval intellectual history, theology and philosophy, including aspects of the thought of Aquinas and Augustine, questions of freewill, love and sin, the importance of allegory as a perceptual prism and expressive tool, and the rise of the universities.

Medieval Culture and Society (18 hours)
Taught by: Tim Jackson (co-ordinator), Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, Margaret Robson, Laura Cleaver, Igor Candido, Brendan O’Connell and Ann Buckley.

This module will offer a wide-ranging introduction to key topics in medieval culture and society, including the courtly ideal, orality and literacy, poetics, song and the visual arts.

Language The number of hours varies according to the particular course.

•     Latin (Helen Conrad-O’Briain) – no prerequisite

•     Italian (staff of the Italian Dept. using existing courses) – no prerequisite: ab initio and higher

•     Old English (Helen Conrad-O’Briain) – no prerequisite

•     Old French

•     Medieval German (Tim Jackson) – prerequisite: a good knowledge of modern German

•     Old Irish (offered every other year, and not in the same year as the medieval Irish options)

II. Options (18 hours each unless otherwise specified; Hilary and Trinity Terms)

Although every effort will be made to accommodate student choice, the decision as to whether a particular option is offered will be subject to student demand and the availability of teaching. Normally, an option will not run unless at least two students wish to take it; in principle, all options are available to students of other taught M. Phil. courses. Most options are taught in Hilary term and consist of nine two-hour sessions, but those offered by staff from outside the College may be organised differently.

Arthurian Heroes: This option will explore the origin and function of the Arthurian myth from Nennius and Gildas to late medieval romances, including Malory, and early Tudor representations of King Arthur.

Language and Genre: his option focuses on a number of practical issues relating to the production of medieval texts: the choice between Latin and the vernacular as linguistic medium – with the possibility of polyglot texts; translation – what gets translated, from which language(s) into which language(s), and why; the relative status of prose and verse – with the possibility of texts employing both modes. Such matters can have both an aesthetic and a social perspective, e.g. differences of taste, differences of function, changes of audience. They will be examined in relation to the literary traditions of Italy (Dante), Germany (Otfrid von Weißenburg, Hartmann von Aue), England (MS F of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and France (Charles d’Orléans). The course concludes with an intertextual analysis of the French, German, Latin and English versions that constitute the tradition of the Gregorius legend.

Text and Image: An introductory session on ‘Scribe and artist’ will discuss technical matters – everything from inks and pigments via the employment of scribes and illustrators to the assembly of manuscripts. After that the option will concentrate on the practical and theoretical aspects of the functions of illustration within texts and the differing relationships of the one to the other on the pages of medieval manuscripts. The issues will be examined in a series of sessions on individual problems/manuscripts/traditions such as The Book of Kells, French books of hours, Vergil manuscripts, Scribe and illustrator in Vienna Codex 2841, the iconography of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, The Assembly of Ladies.

Old English Heroic Poetry: Anglo-Saxon England provides the earliest substantial record of vernacular heroic poetry in Europe. This course will focus mainly on the long Old English poem Beowulf, the first masterpiece in the English language. Close reading of the text will be combined with discussion of the heroic and mythic background to the poem, as well as consideration of the poem’s composition and manuscript context. We will also look at shorter poems such as The Battle of Maldon, an account of a skirmish with the Vikings, and Judith.

Medieval Latin Genres: Texts will include graded material from the Vulgate, liturgical hymns, Isidore's Etymologiae, Glossa Ordinaria, Vergilian commentary, fables, chronicles, saints' lives, secular lyric, and scientific/ philosophic texts. If time allow, there will be a special section on the Latin middle ages and the uncanny.

The Medieval Body: This course examines medieval representations of the human body, its gender and life events, its instability in a world of multiple threats to survival, its significance in metaphorical discourse and its erotic attraction. It relates the underlying ideas to religious sources, to historic developments and to a number of literary and other texts in Latin, Italian, and Old and Middle English.

Medieval Song: In taking equal account of music and poetry, it addresses the history and development of Latin and vernacular song in medieval Europe, c900–c1500, with particular reference to sources and repertoires in Latin, Occitanian, French, German, Italian, Hispanic, and English. A comparative approach is engaged, addressing questions such as the social and political roles of medieval song, genre (e.g., courtly lovesong, religious song, dance song, crusader song), the relationship between Latin and vernacular song, and between words and music.

Dreamers and Mystics in Medieval England: ‘In the later Middle Ages,’ as Steven Kruger has noted, ‘new philosophical and theological movements tended to push God and the human being even further apart, emphasizing the gap between divine action and human understanding’. An awareness of this (or perhaps an anxiety about it) contributed in no small way to the flowering of dream-visions and mystical writings in English in the late fourteenth-century, as writers endeavoured to understand and mediate this gulf between the human and the divine. In this course, we will consider a range of late-fourteenth century English dream-visions and mystical texts, including Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Langland’s Piers Plowman, Pearl, The Cloud of Unknowing and Julian of Norwich’s Showings.

Medieval Translation: Theory and Practice: This module examines the history of translation in medieval Europe, a period of intense activity in the field of literary production. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire created a new environment in which vernacular literatures could emerge. However, very frequently, the literary canons of these vernacular languages developed directly or indirectly from those of sacred or prestige languages through a process of translation. This course will guide students to an understanding of how medieval peoples viewed translation, the factors that made their perception of translation as an activity highly distinct from our own, and the lasting effects that their readiness to produce translations had over their native literary canons.

 

 

III. Research Project Leading to Dissertation (Thesis)

Between April and August students will work on a research project. This aspect of the course will test the ability of the student to undertake original research on a strictly defined topic and to organize and communicate the findings in an appropriately scholarly form. Topics may be chosen from any area for which we are able to provide supervision, but students will be encouraged to make use of the rich manuscript and printed resources of Trinity’s Library. Each project will be supervised by a specialist in the relevant field.