current semester

Spring 2008 Course Listing

MED 401/ENG 401   Forms of Literature:  Medieval Irish and Welsh Literature     Sarah M. Anderson
W 7:30 pm – 10:20
This course surveys early Celtic texts, placing these works of imagination and history within their culture and material contexts.  We’ll read selections from the mythic, heroic, and historical prose cycles of Irish literature, meeting Cuchulainn and frenzied Suibhne.  Welsh poetry offers the bard Taliesin, the first singer of Arthur, and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi present the adventures of Welsh superheroes and kings.  Stories of the Celts and of their British homeland are also lodged in influential medieval Latin writings, so we’ll study Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales to see how Celtic tales shape a broader literature. 

MED 500/ART 537   Seminar in Medieval Art:  Medieval Image/concepts of authenticity
Nino Zchomelidse
TH 7:30 pm – 10:20
The medieval image and concepts of authenticity.  The course examines the notion of the authentic in conjunction with medieval images.  It investigates the construction, reception, and theoretical grounding of authenticity of reliquaries, icons, and imprints on cloth or seals.  These objects elucidate the shift from mimesis toward other artistic strategies (stylization, abstraction, bricolage).  Rather than studying different modes of representation, we will focus on the very validity of representation in the Middle Ages and approach this issue from the viewpoints of history, anthropology, philology and visual studies.

MED 509/GER 509   Middle High German Literature II:  Margery Kempe’s German Sisters
Sara Poor
TH 1:30 – 4:20
Seminar examines the explosion of devotional literature in fifteenth-century Germany.  This phenomenon is striking because of the instrumental role of women in its production  (and reproduction).  The picture emerging from the texts is one of a dynamic, but often tense relationship between the female religious and her confessors, culminating in the Sister Catherine Treatise, a dialogue in which the “spiritual daughter” becomes a “daughter confessor” and instructs her teacher.  Texts read in Middle High German.  Reading knowledge of German required.  Some exposure to MHG recommended but not required.  Class discussions in English.

Courses of Interest

ART 205   Medieval Art in Europe
Nino Zchomelidse
MW     12:30 – 1:20
PO1     2:30 – 3:20 Th
P02      3:30 – 4:20 Th
P03      TBA

ENG 307  Chaucer
David  Wallace
T  1:30 – 4:20      

HIS 344 Civilization of the High Middle Ages
William  Jordan
MW     11:00 – 11:50
P01 TBA

LAT 232  Introduction to Medieval Latin
Janet Martin
MW 1:30 – 2:50

MUS 270  Medieval and Renaissance Music from Original Notation
Peter Jeffery
TTh 1:30 – 2:50

Graduate Courses

CLA 541 Survey of Early Medieval Latin Literature
Janet Martin
T  9:00 – 11:50

COM 543 Topics in Medieval Literature: The Medieval Voice
Daniel Heller-Roazen
W  1:30 – 4:20

COM 581  Topics in Non-Western and General Literature:  Medieval Japanese Representations of the Subject  
Thomas Hare                           
M  1:30 – 4:20

ITA 302  Topics in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture:   Petrarch and Boccaccio  
Staff
                            
See Princeton University course pages for full course details.