Hybridity, monstrosity, humanity: Marie de France & Renard the Fox

• transition from last week: metamorphosis, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translation (narrow and broad senses), translatio studii et imperii; Reynard / Renart / Renard as an exemplary case
• an Ovid example: BNF Arsenal 5069
• approaching foxes and Renard : histoire des mentalités; the plurality of histories and of literary, intellectual, and imaginative histories; cultural studies, folklore, myth, anthropology
  • some names: Prosper Mérimée, Jules Michelet, the Brothers Grimm, Jacques Le Goff
• obvious foxes and common ground across space and time:
  • exemplary Twitter thread (Colin J. Carlson)
  • 21st-century anthropomorphism (Swedish Spaceman)
• bestiaries:
  • Video via Erik Kwakkel
  • News about the digitisation of the Aberdeen Bestiary, from Open Culture
  • The Aberdeen Bestiary
  • The Medieval Bestiary – Bestiary.ca
• expect the unexpected, unexpect the expected: canon law, psalters, books of hours and marginalia; including some Renard retold in the margins; names and word-play (ex. R’s name: “hard counsel” / “pure of heart”):
  • in a liturgical work (via Erik Kwakkel)
  • About books of hours (AbeBooks)
  • A book of hours (Morgan 754)
  • About the Gorleston Psalter (British Library manuscripts blog), BL Add MS 49622
  • BL Stowe MS 17
  • BL Royal MS 10 E IV

Performance notes… (BNF NAF 1104 f. 1r)
Continue reading Week 3 →

Matfré Ermengaud, Breviari d’Amor (Occitan verse version, early 14th c.), British Library Royal MS 19 C I f. 11v. See also: British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog, “The language of love (and poetry and history,” 23 June 2017.
Continue reading Weeks 1-2 →

Work in progress during the imaginatio stage of designing and making this course is on Twitter at #mdvl310c and #mdvl310d. The course grew out of the elements that follow below, which appeared in two courses I taught in 2016, MDVL301A “THE LIBERAL ARTS” & FREN336 “ LA BANDE DESSINÉE” (all images, as elsewhere on this site, are hyperlinked).

For some idea about what this course may be like, information about previous O’Brien Medieval courses at UBC may be helpful:

• MDVL301A: Medieval Studies: European Literature from the 5th to the 14th Century
  “THE LIBERAL ARTS” (2016)
• MDVL302: European Literature of the 14th to the 16th centuries
  “CRITICISM” (2012)
• RMST 221: Romance Studies: Literatures and Cultures of the Romance World I: Medieval to Early Modern
  “INTRIGUE” (2012)
  “MISCHIEF” (2010)
  “ADVENTURES” (2009)

I. ONE IMAGE

II. TWO BOOKS

The Luttrell Psalter: British Library Add. MS 42130

Matfré Ermengau, Breviari d’Amor: British Library Yates Thompson 31

III. THREE FILMS