Syllabus

Syllabus (last updated 2025-03-29: final exam (stage 1) location)

Version of syllabus: 2025-03-29
Latest update: adding final exam (stage 1) location = IBLC 261
2025-02-20 update: adding final exam day and time = Wednesday 23 April, 08:30-11:00 a.m.
2025-02-03 update: schedule – fixing formatting errors added (unrequested) by Canvas in the “Assignments” section
2025-01-05 version 1

Acknowledgment

UBC’s Point Grey Campus is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam). The land it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach and learn about languages, literatures (in the broadest richest sense, as word-arts), and cultures from this place.

Course information

Our course:

  • MDVL 301 and RMST 321 (3 credits)
  • Wednesday & Friday
  • 2:00-3:20 p.m.
  • ANSO 207

Your instructor:

  • She is: Dr Juliet O’Brien
  • Email: juliet.obrien@ubc.ca
    • Communication: I use UBC email for correspondence with individual students (or via Canvas Inbox, if you used that when you first contacted me). For communications with our whole class, I use Canvas Announcements. If you email me: between Monday and Friday you can expect a reply within 48 hours. In the interests of health and well-being in a respectful working environment, I will also never expect *you* to reply outside regular working hours (Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. PDT except public holidays).
  • Office and office hours:
    • Buchanan Tower 703 and Zoom
    • office hours from week 2 onwards, via Canvas

Welcome

Welcome to wondering and wandering, to learning and marvelling, and to co-creating a world of marvels, uniting two cross-listed courses!

Course description

UBC Academic Calendar description

MDVL 301 (3) European Literature from the 5th to the 14th Century
Selected works from the 5th to the 14th centuries in their cultural and social contexts. Recommended pre-requisites: Third-year standing or above in the Faculty of Arts.

RMST 321 (3) French Literature from the Middle Ages to the Revolution
French literature through reading and analysis of translated works.

Description of colocated / cross-listed MDVL301- RMST321 2024W2 version: “A World of Marvels”

Marvellousness (mirabilis, merveille, merveillos) suffuses French and global premodern literatures, crossing borders of place (modern nation-state boundaries), time (early/late), form (literary genre, type of artefact), audience (social class and occupation), and register (high/low). From monsters to miracles, from mysterious other-worldly beings to marginal drolleries, imaginative marvels and their preservation through storytelling helps us to understand perceptions of pre-modernity, a history of those perceptions, and their continuing place in our present world. This course is for anyone who is interested in speculative fictions, escapism and consolation, playfulness, the weird and the awesome, beauty, and the delights of dark humour and satire.

Our adventures will focus on the imaginative worlds of some French texts from the 12th to the 18th centuries (CE): Marie de France’s Fables and Lais, the anonymous Aucassin and Nicolette, Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables, and the fairy tales of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and Charles Perrault. We will also encounter bestiaries, encyclopaedias, universal histories, fables, saints’ lives, maps, almanachs, books of hours, lyric and debate poetry, games, miscellanies, and manuscript marginalia. While our principal focus will be the close reading of literary works, we will also consider their context and transnational influence; the historical landscape in which these landmarks are situated; the cultural background against which their actions are staged; and their relationship to an integrated creative and intellectual environment of visual and plastic arts, music, ideas, technology, ecology, medicine, and science.

Classes consist of interactive lectures interspersed with discussions. Weekly topics and recurring themes include: perceptions of the natural world, creation and creativity, miracles, enchantment, other worlds and the other-worldly, dream-visions and mysticism, the fantastic, automata, metamorphosis and hybridity, apocalypse, nostalgia, utopias and other alternative worlds, and intelligent life.

Prerequisites

Informal recommendation: as this is a 300-level course, it will entail reading, analysis, and independent research.

Informal prerequisites: a sense of curiosity and an openness to wonder.

Required materials

All materials are in English translation; no prior knowledge of other languages is expected. Original versions will be referred to in class—to assist understanding and as a taster for future learning—and students may of course choose to work on texts in their original language for presentations and final projects. Required readings will be available in electronic form via Canvas (free online versions or UBC library online course reserve), and specific editions will be recommended for students who prefer to use a printed book.

  • Course site (Canvas)
  • Aucassin & Nicolette
  • Marie de France, Fables
  • Marie de France, Lais
  • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables
  • Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast
  • Charles Perrault, Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Tales of Mother Goose)

Supplementary materials

A list of recommended readings will be provided by O’Brien:

  • additional readings from references in lectures
  • digitized manuscripts and other contemporary objects freely accessible online, via Canvas and library online course reserve
  • suggestions for students’ supplementary readings (primary texts) for student-led sessions and final projects

Learning objectives

  • to develop skills in knowledge-communicating forms other than the traditional essay and research paper:
    • advanced writing: commentary as close reading and critical writing
    • advanced reading: close reading and annotation, marginalia, creative reading, formulating questions, reading as multiple rereadings, thinking outside the text through thinking deep into it, storytelling (and the French/premodern ambiguous “histoire”), and practising monstrous hybrid forms of critical-creative writing
    • navigating online libraries, searchable repositories, and resources
    • online writing, short and medium length, including threaded and collaborative discussion
    • “prof for the day” student-led session: organisation, responsibility, facilitation
    • audio/podcast and video (which could be a recording of slides/imagery with your voice-over reading a text)
    • poster presentation
  • to develop, expand, and refine perception
    • of a world
    • and of worlds (medieval, pre-modern, French, European, literary)
  • to marvel, to wonder, to seek, and to work on being “seekers”

Assignments

20% regular term-work

  • 10% preparation and participation:
  • weekly short commentary on reading
  • submission: Canvas discussion
  • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Week 2 discussion
  • due: week 2 onwards

5% presentation

  • student-led discussion sessions in “profs for the day” teams
  • submission: in class
  • assignment description and marking: Canvas > “Prof for the day” discussion session
  • due (live interactive work in class): weeks 6, 8, 9, 11, and 12

5% self-evaluation participation portfolio:

  • individual “book of marvels” curated collection of your class community contributions and reflection on your choice
  • submission: Canvas assignment
  • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Self-evaluation
  • due: week 13

40% scaffolded group project: making a marvel

  • 3% stage 1: preliminary meeting of your group with O’Brien, to consult on topic and select extra readings
    • submission after meeting: Canvas discussion
    • assignment description and marking, and long description of the project: Canvas > Project stage 1: check-in 1, preliminary meeting (week 4, Friday)
    • due: week 4
  • 10% stage 2: observation and reflection exercise with your group, in a museum or garden on campus, of marvels related to a course required reading
    • submission: Canvas discussion, group AV commentary
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas >  Project stage 2: observation exercise (reading week / week 7)
    • due: week 8
  • 5% stage 3: progress meeting with O’Brien, for planning
    • submission after: Canvas discussion with work-in-progress notes (restricted to your project group)
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Project stage 3: check-in 2, progress meeting (week 10)
    • due: week 10
  • 2% stage 4: bibliography, references, and methodology outline
    • submission: Canvas discussion (restricted to your project group)
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Project stage 4: methodology outline (week 12)
    • due: week 12
  • 20% stage 5: the final project, making a marvel
    • form: written (anything except the standard academic essay or final paper), audio, video, multimedia, a recorded performance, a comic, a material object, a game, a continuation, a creative work, a translation (broad and narrow senses), a marvel
    • in relation to (echoing, inspired by, riffing on, remixing, etc.) at least one of the course set readings and at least one global premodern extra reading (as discussed and agreed in stage 1+3 meetings)
    • final projects could continue stage 3 of the project or your “prof for the day” session
    • they could intersect with Arts Multilingual Week (March 10-14, week 10 of term)
    • your project should include a close reading of your own marvelling, as commentary or storytelling
    • submission:Canvas > “a world of marvels” discussion as students’ community online exhibit
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Project stage 5: the final project (week 13)
    • due: week 13

UPDATED 2025-03-29: 40% two-stage final exam, Wednesday 23-Thursday 24 April

  • 20% = stage 1: poster (or equivalent) presentation session
    • during the during the scheduled final exam time, as a celebratory “festive fayre of learning” un-exam
    • Wednesday 23 April
    • 08:30-11:00 a.m.
    • IBLC 261
    • submission: group poster + live presentation-explanation by groups, to each other, of their projects
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Poster presentation session = 2-stage final exam, stage 1
  • 20% = stage 2: individual written or recorded commentary
    • peer appreciation of other groups’ poster presentations, in relation to the course topic and to at least one of its set readings
    • take home, in the 24 hours after stage 1
    • submission: Canvas assignment, within 24 hours of the end of the final exam
    • assignment description and marking: Canvas > Peer appreciation commentary = 2-stage final exam, stage 2, take-home writing

Grading breakdown

(balance of process/product/beyond, individual/group/community)

15% = Regular weekly work during term (individual):

  • weekly online commentary (10%)
    • weeks 2-3, 4-6, 8-9, & 11-13
    • 10*1pt
  • self-evaluation portfolio (5%)

5% = Regular weekly work during term (group):

  • weeks 5-6, 8-9, & 11-12
  • 6* student-led “prof for the day” discussion sessions

40% = Final project (group): scaffolded stages of

  • preliminary and progress meetings, notes, outline (10%)
  • observation, reflection, and commentary exercise (10%)
  • the final project itself (20%)

40% = Final exam:

  • poster presentation session, by groups about their projects (20%)
  • individual peer appreciation commentary to be submitted within 24 hours afterwards (20%)

Total = 100%

Schedule

Further and fuller details are on Canvas, via the Syllabus’s Course summary, and in the course’s Assignments and weekly Modules 

WEEK 1 (6-10 January 2025)

  • Module / Week 1: introduction – words and marvels
  • Assignments:
    • Week 1 discussion

WEEK 2 (13-17 January 2025)

  • Week 2: chapter 1 – beauties and beasts
  • Readings – ch. 1, weeks 2-4
    • Marie de France, Lais
    • Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast
    • Jean Cocteau, La Belle et la Bête (1946 movie)
  • Assignments:
    • Week 2 discussion (and more about this set of assignments)

WEEK 3 (20-24 January 2025)

  • Week 3: chapter 1
  • Assignments:
    • Week 3 discussion

WEEK 4 (27-31 January 2025)

  • Week 4: chapter 1 & first project check-in
  • Assignments:
    • Week 4 discussion
    • Project stage 1: check-in 1, preliminary meeting (week 4, Friday) (and more about the project, as a scaffolded set of assignments)

WEEK 5 (3-7 February 2025)

  • Week 5: chapter 2 – sleeping beauties, dreaming woods and otherworlds
  • Readings – ch. 2, weeks 5-8
    • Aucassin and Nicolette
    • Charles Perrault, Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Tales of Mother Goose)
  • Assignments:
    • Week 5 discussion

WEEK 6 (10-14 February 2025)

  • Week 6: chapter 2
  • Assignments:
    • Week 6 discussion
    • First student-group-led “Prof for the day” discussion session (and more about this assignment)

WEEK 7 (17-21 February 2025)

  • Week 7 – READING WEEK / MIDTERM BREAK
  • Assignments:
    • Project stage 2: observation exercise (reading week / week 7)

WEEK 8 (24-28 February 2025)

  • Week 8: chapter 2
  • Assignments:
    • Week 8 discussion
    • Second student-group-led “Prof for the day” discussion session (and more about this assignment)

WEEK 9 (3-7 March 2025)

  • Week 9: chapter 3 – the (beautiful) power of fables
  • Readings – ch. 3, weeks 9-12
  • Assignments:
    • Week 9 discussion
    • Third student-group-led “Prof for the day” discussion session (and more about this assignment)

WEEK 10 (10-14 March 2025)

  • Week 10: second project check-in
  • Assignment:
    • Project stage 3: check-in 2, progress meeting (week 10)

WEEK 11 (17-21 March 2025)

  • Week 11: chapter 3
  • Assignments:
    • Week 11 discussion
    • Fourth student-group-led “Prof for the day” discussion session (and more about this assignment)

WEEK 12 (24-28 March 2025)

  • Week 12: chapter 3
  • Assignments:
    • Week 12 discussion
    • Project stage 4: methodology outline (week 12)
    • Fifth student-group-led “Prof for the day” discussion session (and more about this assignment)

WEEK 13 (31 March-4 April 2025)

  • Week 13: conclusion – worlds of marvels, revolutionary marvellousness
  • Assignments:
    • Project stage 5: the final project (week 13)
    • Self-evaluation (and more about this assignment)

EXAM PERIOD (12-27 April 2025)

  • Assignments: two-part final exam, Wednesday 23 April 08:30-11:00 a.m., IBLC 261
    • Poster presentation session = 2-stage final exam, stage 1 (and more about this assignment)
    • Peer appreciation commentary = 2-stage final exam, stage 2, take-home writing (and more about this assignment)

PDF version

of the information above (old version, this HTML page is the most up-to-date version): 24W2 MDVL301-RMST321 syllabus1_course

Syllabus (part 2) – policies