❊ PDF of the syllabus & schedule ❊
(3 credits)
Term 2: Tuesday/Thursday, 12:30-2:00 pm
Room: Buchanan B208
Juliet O’Brien, Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies
juliet.obrien@ubc.ca
Description
Criticism pervades pre-modern European literature: across a range of kinds of writing, high and low, scholarly and popular, serious and light-hearted—even scathingly satirical. From a long continuing tradition of exegesis and commentary, through didactic works, to incorporation within works such as the Roman de la Rose and “quarrels” about and around them, we will see a subversive side to questioning and debate. It explores themes of social and religious critique, attacks hypocrisy and corruption, and develops ideas of privacy and identity, freedom of conscience and expression, and the figure of the public intellectual.
In this course we will explore various aspects of later Medieval literature through the theme of criticism, as expressed in a number of texts written in the Continental vernaculars and in Latin, and having an influence throughout Europe. While our principal focus will be the study of literary works, we will also explore the historical landscape in which these landmarks are situated; the cultural background against which their dramatic actions are staged; and their relationship to an integrated creative and intellectual environment–including visual and plastic arts, music, ideas, and the sciences.
Supplementary readings for term papers will include: the Old French fabliaux; Boccaccio, Decameron; Christine de Pisan and the querelle de la Rose; Alain Chartier, La Belle Dame sans merci and its querelle; the European Reynard tradition; Chaucer; Wycliffe; Till Eulenspiegel; Thomas More, Utopia; Rabelais; and Shakespeare.
The course is taught in English. All readings are provided in the original languages and in English translation. The term paper may be written in English or another language according to preference or program requirements.
Required reading:
Course website: https://blogs.ubc.ca/mdvl302
(more information will be appearing here from December 2011 onwards…)
Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose
Trans. Frances Horgan.
Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.
ISBN: 978-0199540679
Renard the Fox
Trans. Patricia Terry.
University of California Press, 1992.
ISBN: 978-0520076846
Christine de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Trans. Rosalind Brown-Grant.
Penguin Classics, 2004.
ISBN: 978-0140446890
Fernando de Rojas, Celestina.
Trans. Peter Bush.
Penguin, 2009.
ISBN: 978-0143106098
Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings.
Trans. Robert M. Adams.
Norton, 1989.
ISBN: 978-0393957495
Requirements: A 4-5 page paper due at midterm; a research project (7-8 page paper) due at the end of term; class participation and regular short writing on the course blog; a final exam.
There is no pre-requisite for this course. MDVL 301 – Literature of the Middle Ages to 1300 – will be offered in the first semester, preceding MDVL 302. The two courses may, however, be taken separately.
Course description (PDF, same information as in the Medieval Studies Course List)
Header image c/o Wikimedia Commons:
Hans Holbein the Younger (1498–1543)
“Folly Steps Down From the Pulpit,” pen and ink marginal drawing in a copy of The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus.
This is the last of 82 marginal drawings that include the first works of Holbein to survive intact. He and his brother, Ambrosius, drew them in the copy of The Praise of Folly owned by classical scholar Oswald Myconius, who planned to show the result to the author, his friend Erasmus. Most of the sketches, including this one, are by Hans Holbein, whose style and left-handed hatching identify him from Ambrosius. Here the figure of Folly steps down from the pulpit at last, her arm rigid from gesturing.
Date: December 1515
Source: Christian Müller; Stephan Kemperdick; Maryan Ainsworth; et al, Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515–1532, Munich: Prestel, 2006, ISBN 9783791335803.
