MST3603H: Society and Literary Texts in Medieval Spain

The course presents a historical overview of fundamental aspects of Spanish society in the Middle Ages and provides a look at social issues through the analysis of representative literary texts of this period. The course begins by reading articles that provide the historical background on how medieval society viewed and dealt with death, love, faith, crime, marriage, prostitution, treason, and honour. Secondly, the course develops into the analysis of the main corpus of literary works written in medieval Spain between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 15th century as documents for the study of the Middle Ages. We will read literature in translation, such as The poem of Mio Cid (c. 1200), The Miracles of our Lady (c. 1250), The Book of Good Love (c. 1330), Tales of Count Lucanor (c. 1335), Stanzas about the Death of his Father (c. 1476), and La Celestina (1499).

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St. George