FR Medieval: Senses of the Text in Medieval France
This seminar series will focus on the representation of the senses in the literary culture of medieval France, and the ways in which the senses of modern readers are involved in encounters with the materiality of medieval texts.听 Literature composed in the Middle Ages is transmitted to the modern age in the medium of hand-written texts (manuscripts) on vellum, often richly decorated with images. Medieval representations of knowledge and embodiment, as well as medieval accounts of cognition and learning, often evoke the senses: to explore these alongside an investigation of medieval manuscripts which attends to the sensory and the material can yield insights into the practices of medieval and modern reading. Manuscripts can also enable us to imagine sensing that which is absent: we might be able to hear song, for example, to feel breath, or to see impossible objects or bodies.听 The libraries of 澳门六合彩开奖记录 house a wealth of manuscripts transmitting medieval literature: the seminar series will involve some library visits and the opportunity to discuss manuscript culture and the ways in which we encounter it in the twenty-first century, when we can become accustomed 鈥� and sometimes obliged 鈥� to interact with art, literature, nature, and other humans via digital media.听 While students will be encouraged to explore these ideas and approaches in relation to a wide range of medieval texts in French and Occitan, in seminars we will use readings taken from textual traditions that privilege the senses in different ways, including bestiaries, troubadour songs, medieval theatre, and allegorical poetry. Secondary reading will enable us to theorise the sensory and the material, and to give students more familiarity with medieval accounts of the senses. Questions we will explore in the seminar series:听 鈥⑻� 听How did medieval accounts of the senses influence medieval representations of knowledge, embodiment and reading?听 鈥⑻� 听How can a physical encounter with a manuscript enhance or affect understanding of the textual tradition it transmits?听 鈥⑻� 听What sort of knowledge is afforded and privileged by such accounts and reading encounters?听 鈥⑻� 听What are the differences between medieval and twenty-first-century apprehensions of the senses?听
Preliminary reading Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours, edited by Robert Kehew, with translations by Ezra Pound, W. D. Snodgrass, and Robert Kehew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).听 Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry, translated by Paul Blackburn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; reprint New York: New York Review Books, 2017). Jean Bodel, Le Jeu de saint Nicolas, edited and translated by Jean Dufournet (Paris: Flammarion, 2005). Catherine Brown, 鈥楳anuscript Thinking: Stories by Hand鈥�, Postmedieval 2, 2011, pp. 350-368. Florence Bouchet, 鈥業ntroduction: D鈥檜n sens 脿 l鈥檃utre鈥�, in Penser les cinq sens au Moyen A虃ge: poe虂tique, esthe虂tique, e虂thique, edited by Florence Bouchet and Anne-He虂le虁ne Klinger-Dolle虂 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015). Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400鈥�1200 (澳门六合彩开奖记录: CUP, 1998). Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford: OUP, 2013). Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, 鈥楲e Sch茅ma des cinq sens, d鈥檜ne th茅orie de la connaissance 脿 la creation de formes litt茅raires鈥�, I cinque sensi; The Five Senses, Micrologus, 10, 2002, 55-69. Sarah Kay, Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chicago UP, 2017). Mark Michael Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008). Paul Zumthor, La lettre et la voix : De la 鈥榣itt茅rature鈥� m茅di茅vale (Paris: Seuil, 1987) (read selectively) There will normally be a maximum capacity of 14 for this module. 听
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