Fall ‘15 Courses at Indiana University
This year will be my last year of PhD coursework. This fall, I am taking Medieval Latin, Old Irish, and a comparative literature course treating the construction of self in Western Medieval texts. Course descriptions below:
• CLAS-L 540 Readings in Medieval Latin: Alan of Lille
Selections from the works of the twelfth-century intellectual, including the Plaint of Nature and the Anticlaudianus, as well as from his rhetorical, exegetical, theological, and polemical works. We will also examine the poet's historical and intellectual surroundings, personal and political networks, the transmission and reception of the texts, and recent scholarly disputes about his identity. Students should have at least advanced-intermediate skill in Latin; the ability to read secondary literature in modern French will also be helpful. No previous experience with medieval Latin is required.
• ENG-G 601 Medieval Languages: Introduction to Old Irish
The topic this semester will be the Old Irish language. Irish is a Celtic language, related to Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and several extinct continental languages, including Gaulish. Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx are descended from Old Irish. The Old Irish period lasted roughly from 600 to 900 CE, the Middle Irish from ca. 900 to 1200. In addition to laws, glosses, saints' legends, and tracts on grammar, poetic meter, medicine, and a wide variety of other topics commonly treated in medieval vernacular literatures, Old Irish literature includes a sizeable body of poetry and of sagas, the latter particularly relating to the heroes of ancient Ulster. Some of the most remarkable characteristics of the language are these: (1) a system of initial consonant mutations, whereby grammatical relations are indicated by the interchange of initial consonants in individual words (as in Welsh); (2) palatalization of consonants, which may differentiate inflectional forms within paradigms, and which is one source of complexity in the orthography; (3) extreme allomorphy within some verb paradigms; (4) conjugated prepositions (as in Welsh); and (5) infixation of prepositions within some verb forms. The textbook for the course will be Ruth and Winfred Lehmann's Introduction to Old Irish (MLA, 1975), which includes the delightful tale Scéla Muicce Meic Da Thó 'The Story of Mac Da Thó’s Pig'. Later in the semester we will read selections from J. Carmichael Watson's edition of Mesca Ulad 'The Intoxication of the Ulstermen' (Dublin, 1967). There will be two examinations and some shorter exercises.
• MEST-M 502
CMLT-C 523 Constructing the Self in Medieval European Literature
This semester, we will explore what medieval lyrics, plays, and narratives -- both courtly and devotional texts -- can reveal to us about the role of performance in constructing identity and community in medieval European cultures. We will examine such topics as the relationship of musical and dramatic performance of verbal texts to the visual arts, the representation of reading as performance, and the construction of gender and faith as performance. Our common readings will include lyrics poems by Yehuda Halevi, Hildegard von Bingen, Lombarda de Toulouse, Walther von der Vogelweide, Alfonso X, and Guillaume de Machaut; plays such as Abraham, Aucassin and Nicolette, The N-Town Mary Play, and The Second Shepherds’ Play; and narratives such as The Song of the Cid, The Romance of Silence, the Decameron, The City of Ladies, and The Book of Margery Kempe. Students will prepare two class presentations on critical or theoretical readings and complete an individual research project on the role of performance in a medieval text of their choice.