| Andrea Solomon as660@columbia.edu (212) 854-6348 408F Lewisohn Hall Meetings by appointment |
Marlene Hennessy mvh2@columbia.edu (212) 854-6981 411B Barnard Hall Meetings by appointment |
Class Meetings: TR 4:10pm-6:00pm Lewisohn Hall Room 408 |
| This intensive team-taught course in the literature and culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance emphasizes close readings in historical context, the development of critical vocabulary and imagination, and in-depth study of some of the most important authors, including Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Galileo, Sor Juana. Selections from a range of medieval genres will be read, including autobiography, letters, the lai, the lyric, and the fabliaux, and Renaissance genres such as essay, play, treatise, novel, sermon, and epic. Throughout we will consider how these writers sought to make sense of the world around them, what their conceptions of the self were, their often complex representations of women, and the different notions of authorship embedded in their works. Other topics will include: Christianity and the classics; sin, damnation, and salvation; the ÒdiscoveryÓ of the individual; new ideas of romantic love; mysticism; nationalism and political machinery; medieval medicine and the renaissance scientific method; humanism; concepts of justice; religious reformation; and the encounter with the New World. |