Fall 09 HIST 611C Advanced Readings in European History: Medieval
Thursdays 1:30-4:00 Sakamaki A201
Dr. Karen Jolly
This course is an introduction to medieval studies focused on both historical methods and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of medieval European cultures. We will address the topic of what is “the text” both from a material standpoint of the text as artifact—using paleography, codicology, and archaeology—and in a theoretical framework, the text as a representation of the medieval past in post-modern and post-colonial discourse. Students are expected to participate in weekly discussion of the readings, write a series of reviews, and produce a final project analyzing a primary source in its manuscript context(s). The last 30 minutes of each class day from Sept. 24 through Nov.19 is reserved for discussion of the Manuscript Studies book, which will keep us grounded in the materiality of the texts
Required Texts
- Howell, Martha and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
- Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).
- Other books and articles assigned weekly.
Recommended Texts
- Bull, Marcus, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
- Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Grading (see assignment guidelines)
- 40% Four book reviews (10% each, on “Selections” weeks)
- 40% Final project (due Dec. 17)
- 20% Oral presentations and participation
Schedule (see detailed list of readings)
- 08/27 Intro to Medieval Studies: Tools
- 09/03 Intro to Historical Methods
- 09/10 Reliable Sources?
- 09/17 Special Collections and Preservation
- 09/24 Historiography of the Middle Ages: All Read
- 10/01 Historiography of the Middle Ages: Selections
- 10/08 Language, Orality, Literacy, and Memory: All Read
- 10/15 Language, Orality, Literacy, and Memory: Selections
- 10/22 Artifacts: All Read
- 10/29 Artifacts: Selections
- 11/05 Artifacts: Electronic
- 11/12 Cultures and Identities: All Read
- 11/19 Cultures and Identities: Selections
- 11/26 Thanksgiving holiday
- 12/03 Writing Workshop
- 12/10 Project Presentations
Assignment Guidelines
Book Reviews: Written and Oral
For the “selections” weeks, each student will pick a book to read and review. During class, each student will give a presentation on their book as well as distribute a copy of their written review in advance via Laulima.
The oral presentation should take 10-15 minutes and include a brief summary of the book’s main ideas (NOT a description of the contents), its contributions to the field, and relevance to our seminar’s themes, with comparisons to other materials we have read. The presentation should include questions or thoughts leading to a class discussion of the issues.
The written review should be 4-5 pages double-spaced (12 point) and be modeled on the kinds of reviews found in scholarly journals (American Historical Review, Speculum). The review should analyze the book’s thesis, cogency of its arguments, use of evidence, and its historiographical context. A description of the contents should only be included as part of an analysis of the book’s structure and contributions. Reviews should be uploaded to Laulima 24 hours before class so students have a chance to skim them before we meet.
Final Project: Written and Oral
The goal of this project is to take a medieval “text” broadly defined and run it to ground: where did it come from, how is it disseminated and reproduced, what does that mean for our understanding and use of that text as a piece of historical evidence. The text should be a single item of some kind—a poem, treatise, charter, homily, diary, letter, monument, or any artifact that involves written words in any medieval language.
The easiest way to proceed is to work backwards from the present to the “original” source: start with the modern translations and critical editions, trace those back to the manuscript or artifact origins, and examine what we learn by seeing the text in its material context. How many versions are there? How many manuscripts or copies of it are extant? What are their dates and provenance? What else is in the surrounding pages? How has it been edited, collated, translated, or reproduced? What has happened to it between its medieval production and its modern appearance as an artifact of the past?
For example, the poem Beowulf exists in only one version in one manuscript with no agreement on either the date of the manuscript or the date of the poem, although the poem is now considered “canonical” and reproduced in innumerable media today. In other cases, a largely forgotten but popular medieval text may exist in multiple manuscripts from different eras and places but with variations in spelling, content, glosses, translations, and contiguous texts. What does this evidence suggest about the nature of the text, its audiences, and uses then and now?
Because it may take several tries to find a viable text for your project, and to avoid overlap, you should begin searching out possibilities immediately and be prepared to discuss your choices on Sept. 10. We will periodically discuss the projects in class to get updates. On Dec. 10, each student will make a 15 minute presentation with visuals explaining what you discovered. The final paper, 10-15 pages double-spaced, is due Dec. 17 and should be submitted electronically to Dr. Jolly. Citations should use Chicago Manual of Style Humanities footnotes (not author-date in-text citation).
Readings (subject to change)
-
08/27 Intro to Medieval Studies: Tools
Reference works:
- Caenegem, Raoul C. van and Francois L. Ganshof, eds., Guide to the Sources of Medieval History (New York: North-Holland Pub., 1978). D117 .C25
- Paetow, Louis John, A Guide to the Study of Medieval History, ed. Gray C. Royce and Lynn Thorndike (Mediaeval Academy of America, Kraus Reprints, 1980) Z6203 .P25 1980 and Literature of Medieval History, 1930-1975: a supplement, ed. Gray Cowan Boyce, 5 vol. (Mediaeval Academy of America, Kraus Reprints, 1981) Z6203 .P25 1980 Suppl
- Powell, James M. Medieval Studies, 2nd edition (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992). D116 .M4 1992
- International Medieval Bibliography (accessible through UH Library electronic resources)
- Internet Medieval Sourcebook (IMS)
- The Medieval Review
- New: EuroDocs
- 09/03 Introduction to Historical Methods
- From Reliable Sources, Chapters I-III
- recommended: Bull, Marcus, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). D116 .B95 2005
- 09/10 Reliable Sources?
- From Reliable Sources, Chapters IV-V
- recommended: Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). D16.8 .G23 2004
- 09/17 Special Collections and Preservation
- 09/24 Historiography of the Middle Ages: All Read
- Davis, Kathleen, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), introduction and epilogue.
- Freedman, Paul and Gabrielle M. Speigel, “Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 677-704. accessible online
- Biddick, Kathleen, “Bede’s Blush: Postcards from Bali, Bombay, and Palo Alto” in The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 16-44.
- Geary, Patrick J., “Visions of Medieval Studies in North America” in The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 45-57.
- Explore:In the Middle: The Babel Working Group
- Manuscript Studies 1-2
- 10/01 Historiography of the Middle Ages: Selections
- Biddick, Kathleen, The Shock of Medievalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). CB353.B5 1998
- Buc, Phillipe, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ, 2002). BL600 .B76 2001 on shelf
- Bynum, Caroline Walker, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books, 2001). BD373 .B96 2001
- Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000). D113.5.P65 2000.
- Frantzen, Allen J., ed., Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany, NY, 1991). on shelf
- Holsinger, Bruce, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making
of Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2005). PN99.F8 H65 2005
- Partner, Nancy, ed., Writing Medieval History (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). own
- Patterson, Lee, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). PR255 .P34 1987
- Spiegel, Gabrielle M., The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997). D116 .S685 1997
- Stock, Brian, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore, 1990).
- Watkins, Carl S., History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). BR750 .W36 2007 on shelf
- All read: Manuscript Studies 3-4
10/08 Language, Orality, Literacy, and Memory: All Read
- Downes, Jeremy, “Or(e)ality: The Nature of Truth in Oral Settings,” Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages, ed. W. H. F. Nicolaisen (Binghamton: CEMERS 1995), 130-140.
- Innes, Matthew, “Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society,” Past and Present 158 (1998). available online
- Jager, Eric, “The Book of the Heart: Reading and Writing the Medieval Subject,” Speculum 71 (1996), 1-26. available online.
- McFadden, Brian, “The Elements of Discourse: Orality, Literacy and Nature in the Elemental Miracles of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History,” American Benedictine Review 55 (2004), 442-63. pdf
- Moore, R. I., “Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c. 1000-c. 1150” in Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, eds., Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 363-75.
- Zieman, Katherine, Singing the New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), preface.
- Manuscript Studies 5
10/15 Language, Orality, Literacy, and Memory: Selections
- Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). BF371 .C325 2008
- Copeland, Rita, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 11 (Cambridge, 1991). PA8035 .C6 1991
- Geary, Patrick, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the end of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
- Irvine, Martin, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory 350-1100 (Cambridge, 1994). PN671 .I68 1994
- Lerer, Seth, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1991). PR179.L57 L4 1991
- McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge, 1990). on shelf
- Pratt, David, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge University Press, 2007). DA153 .P83 2007 on shelf
- Saenger, Paul, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture (Stanford, 1997). Z1003 .S13 1997
- Stanton, Robert, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2002). PR133 .S73 2002
- Stock, Brian, After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text BR65.A62 S745 2001 and/or The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983). P211 .S69 1983
- All read: Manuscript Studies 6-7
10/22 Artifacts: All Read
- Christie, Edward J. “Quid est littera? The Materiality of the Letter and the Presence of the Past from Alcuin of York to the Electronic Beowulf,” Ph.D. Diss., West Virginia Univ., 2003 DAI 65A (2004), 1791. pdf christilittera and Christie, Edward. “The image of the letter: from the Anglo-Saxons to the electronic Beowulf,” Culture, Theory and Critique 44.2 (2003): 129-50.
- Hodges, Richard, “Parachutists and Truffle-hunters: At the Frontiers of Archaeology and History" in The Rural Settlements of Medieval England, ed. Michael Aston, et. al. (Oxford, 1989).
- New: Mayer, Lauryn S., Worlds Made Flesh: Reading Medieval Manuscript Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), preface.
- Nichols, Stephen G., “Why Material Philology?,” Zeitschrift für deutsche philologie 116 (1997): 10-30.
- Rouse, Richard, “Medieval Manuscripts in the Modern Curriculum” in The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 300-312.
- Manuscript Studies 8-9
10/29 Artifacts: Selections
- Brown, Michelle P., The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England (British Library, 1996) or the Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003). own
- Ó Carragáin, Éamonn, Ritual and the Rood (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2005). own
- Boynton, Susan, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125, Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). no UH; xeroxed.
- Camille, Michael, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998) ND3357.L8C36 1998 and also Images on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) N5975 .C36 1992
- Conner, Patrick W., Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1993). DA690.E9 C7 1993 on shelf. see also cd
- Noel, William, The Harley Psalter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image, and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury, ed. Margaret Gibson, T. A. Heslop, and Richard W. Pfaff (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992); The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, ed. Koert van der Horst, William Noel, and Wilhelmina C. M. Wüsterfeld (London: Harvey Miller, 1996). own
- New: Farr, Carol, The Book of Kells: Its Function and Audience (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and British Library, 1997). ND 3359K4 F37 on shelf
- Grotans, Anna, Reading in Medieval St. Gall (Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press, 2006). ILL only
- Stevick, Robert, The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). Z107 S74 1994 on shelf.
- Hines, John, Voices in the Past: English Literature and Archaeology (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004). PR25 .H56 2004
- New: Carver, Martin, Portmahomack: Monastery of the Picts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). on shelf (ILL)
- All read: Manuscript Studies 10
11/05 Artifacts: Electronic
All review:
1. British Libraries
2. Continental Libraries
3. US Libraries
4. Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Manuscripts
5. Scripts in the British Isles
6. Anglo-Saxon Culture
7. Archaeology
8. Byzantine Paleography
9. Art and Artifacts (cds)
- The Bayeux Tapestry digital edition, Martin K. Foys. own
- Images of Salvation: The Story of the Bible through Medieval Art, Christianity and Culture resource.
- Pilgrims and Pilgrimage: Journey, Spirituality, and Daily Life through the Centuries, Christianity and Culture resource.
10. Popular Image Sites
11/12 Cultures and Identities: All Read
- Fleming, Robin, “Writing Biography on the Edge of History,” AHR 114 (2009): 606-30.
- Gillett, Andrew, “Ethnogenesis: A Contested Model for Early Medieval Europe,” History Compass 4 (2006): 241-60.
- Murray, Alexander, “Missionaries and Magic in Dark-Age Europe,” in Lester K. Little, and Barbara H. Rosenwein, eds., Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 92-104.
- Van Engen, John,"The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem," AHR 91 (1986): 519-52.
- Manuscript Studies 13-14
11/19 Cultures and Identities: Selections
- Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity AD 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). and any of his works
- Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf, ed., Historiography in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2003). D116 H575 2003 on shelf.
- Drout, Michael, How Tradition Works: A Descriptive Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century (Tempe: ACMRS, 2006). PR173 .D76 2006
- Frantzen, Allen J., Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990).
- Geary, Patrick J., The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002). own
- Glenn, Jason, Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The Work and World of Richer of Rheims. (Cambridge University Press, 2004). DC36.98.R53 G54 2004
- Howe, Nicholas, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Cultural Geography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). DA152.2 .H69 2008
- Lees, Clare A. and Gillian R. Overing, eds., A Place to Believe in: Locating Medieval Landscapes (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). rev. Church History 76.3 (Sept. 2007), 614-15. CB353 .P58 2006 on shelf
- McKitterick, Rosamond, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) or History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). D13.5.E85 M384 2004 on shelf
- Smith, Julia M. H., Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000 (Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005). D121 .S67 2005
- Turner, Sam, Making a Christian Landscape: The Countryside in Early Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006). See Speculum 83.1 rev. DA670.C8 T87 2006
- Williamson, Tom. Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment (Macclesfield: Windgather Press, 2003). DA176 .W54 2003 on shelf
- All read: Manuscript Studies 15-16
12/03 Writing Workshop
Bring drafts of your final project
12/10 Project Presentations
Meet in Hamilton Library
created 08/25/09 updated 10/22/09