This course provides an introduction to the Old High German language and the earliest stage of German literary history. Students will explore readings selected to underscore the dialectal diversity of the language and to offer an overview of all the extent genres of Old High German literature (e.g., glosses, religious prose, heroic and religious poetry, charms, etc.).

This course introduces students to the rich vernacular literary remains of the medieval Celtic nations. In any given year the course may focus on different selected literary genres or geographic areas, such as 'The Heroic Tradition in Ireland and Wales,' 'Wales and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi,' or 'The Otherworld in Medieval Irish and Welsh Literature.' While no prior knowledge of Celtic languages is required, as all material will be read in English translation, the instructor is available to support students who wish to conduct their seminar research primarily in Irish, Welsh, or Latin.

This course traces the medieval transformation of classical ideas about persuasive language and literary aesthetics, by focusing on such topics as the role of figurative language, especially metaphor and allegory, the structural principles of literary works, and the function of literature in society. Students will become familiar with the classical basis of medieval rhetorical thought through an analysis of select writings of the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, and Horace, before turning to early medieval rhetorical and linguistic thought, in the writings of such theorists as Martianus Capella, Isidore of Seville, and Donatus. Finally, the course will illustrate how the views of language expressed in classical and early medieval rhetorical texts shaped the later development of medieval literature.

This course explores the development of key medieval theoretical ideas about writing, reading, interpretation, imagination, and memory. Through close readings of rhetorical treatises, arts of poetry, preaching manuals and textual commentaries written in Latin between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, students will study key topics, such as the status of literary creations, styles, authorship, relationship between texts and readers as well as that of texts and authors, and the ethically charged understanding of how texts are shaped by as well as shape extra-textual reality. Medieval theoretical discussions and their practical translations in various forms of medieval writing will be explored in comparison with modern theoretical treatments of similar questions. Readings include works by Pseudo Cicero, Horace, Augustine, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Matthew of Vendôme, Alberic of Montecassino, and Dante, as well as a range of medieval commentary and modern theory focussed on questions of authorship, memory and imagination.

This course explores the ubiquity of music in the Middle Ages. "Without music no discipline is complete," wrote Isidore of Seville, to which we may add that music was an integral part of nearly every aspect of medieval life; to rephrase Isidore, "without music the Middle Ages are incomplete." Students will engage, first, with Antiquity and its important musical heritage; then they will study the intersections between medieval intellectual life and music to consider musical manifestations in broader contexts of everyday performance. No experience in reading music notation is required.

This course covers the essentials of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) grammar, and introduces students to Ge'ez texts of elementary to intermediate difficulty. Designed for students with no previous knowledge of Ge'ez.

This course continues the study of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) grammar and progresses to a survey of classical Ge'ez literature. Linguistic connections to Amharic and Tigrinye will also be introduced.

The course covers a range of works in the Boethian corpus, with special attention given to the Philosophiae consolatio. Although the emphasis will be on the Boethian works and their ancient background, students are invited to pursue aspects of the medieval Fortleben that may interest them.

This course addresses the variety of representations of death, sickness, and crime (including representations of burials, tombs, last judgment, tortures, mortal illnesses, suicide, medical care, and plagues). Iconography will be used together with legal, historical and literary sources. The goal of the course will be to understand better how these different sources interact, complement and sometimes even contradict each other. The course mainly focuses on Medieval Spain and examines representations and texts from England and Italy as well. However, students can conduct research on any area of their interest.

This course surveys the major developments and examines key texts in the history of medicine in Europe and the Mediterranean from c.300 to 1400 AD. Topics include pharmacy and pharmacological treatises, surgery, therapeutics, regimen and diet, the transmission and adaptation of ancient medical works, the contributions of Arabic authors, the school of Salerno, the rise of academic and professional medicine in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, medical responses to the Black Death, and anatomy on the eve of Renaissance medicine.

From digitized corpora of texts and manuscripts to virtual and augmented-reality reconstructions of objects, buildings, and archaeological sites, the materials of medieval history, literature, and cultural heritage archives are increasingly entering the digital realm. Students will familiarize themselves with the intellectual landscape of digital medieval studies — from editions, archives, and tools, to communities of practice and theoretical approaches. They will also critically engage with debates in the field of digital humanities from a medievalist’s point of view, examining the fault lines in digital tools and approaches that are revealed through their contact with fragile, fragmentary medieval data.

This course examines representations of the Apocalypse in especially but not exclusively the literature of England. It pays particular attention to the visual symbols of Apocalypse, asking how these often sensational images were used by medieval authors to convey an extraordinary range of personal, political, and theological concerns. It explores, for instance, how the Anglo-Saxons used Apocalypse to represent the death of a culture, how authors like Jacobus de Voragine used Apocalypse to represent the value of animal life, and how William Langland used Apocalypse to dramatize social crisis and the need for reform. Along the way, it also examines the ways that medieval authors used humor and parody to resist the urgency of apocalyptic discourse. In exploring the wide variety of medieval responses to Apocalypse, this course also poses a broad methodological question: how should scholars of the Middle Ages understand the relationship between religious belief and poetic expression? We investigate the nature of this relationship in part by asking how medieval authors, from Bede to Chaucer, used apocalyptic imagery to represent the thrills and disasters of everyday life.

The explosive growth of Europe's literary culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was unprecedented as an urban phenomenon. The concentration of aristocratic tastes, mercantile capital, and political power and the presence of civic, ducal, royal, or imperial chanceries accelerated the development of literary production in Europe's cities. Cities began to emerge as literary centres, and clerks and commercial scribes were crucial in this transformation. This course examines how late medieval writers imagined themselves and the towns in which they lived. It explores the relationship between biological writers, social texts, and the material conditions of writing in urban centres in England, France, the Empire, Prussia, and Poland-Lithuania. We will experience through premodern eyes Thomas Hoccleve's London, Margaret Ebner's Nuremberg, Margery Kempe's Lynn, Janko of Czarnków's Cracow, and Christine de Pizan's Paris. This course covers a wide range of literary and non-literary texts (among them pragmatic texts, mystical literature, and autobiographical writings) and material formats, such as letters, books, and rolls. Topics will include female literacy and social scandals, mental illness, and petty politics.

Digital tools and approaches have a long history in the scholarly study of Old English: from the Dictionary of Old English, born digital a decade before the internet; to the Electronic Beowulf, shedding new light on the Beowulf manuscript through digital imaging since 1993; to twenty-first century manuscript digitization and corpus building efforts. This course introduces students to digital scholarship in Old English. A survey of digital scholarship in the field is followed by practical workshops in digital methods: working with digital manuscript repositories and viewers; coding and computational text analysis (and their limitations); mapping and data visualization; scholarly video games and augmented reality exhibits. Finally, through workshops and consultation with Old English, library, and technology specialists, students develop their own scholarly digital project about Old English texts.

This course is an introduction to medieval Catalan language and literature. The first semester will consist of a thorough presentation of Catalan grammar with special emphasis on the distinctive morphological, syntactical, and lexical features of medieval usage. We will also examine the relevant political, social, and cultural factors which contributed to the development of Catalan as a literary language from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. By the middle of the first semester we will begin literary readings in combination with formal grammatical material. The second semester will shift from an emphasis on grammar to a survey of medieval Catalan literature. We will read a variety of texts from genres as diverse as troubadour lyric, historical narrative, sermon literature, and romance. The texts proposed for study are the following: Cerverí de Girona, selected poems; Ramon Llull, Blanquerna, Pere el Cerimoniós, Crònica; Sant Vicent Ferrer, sermons; Bernat Metge, Lo Somni; Ausias March, selected poems; Jaume Roig, Llibre de les dones; and Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc. We will analyze these texts from both literary and historical perspectives.

This research seminar will offer an introduction to the Old French epic (or chanson de geste), which is one of the most productive and most influential narrative genres of medieval French literature. The first part of the seminar will be dedicated to the close reading and interpretation of the Chanson de Roland, while also introducing broader research problems related to the epic genre, such as the question of its origins, the epic style, various aspects of medium and performance (especially the key issues of oral or written transmission, improvisation vs. planned composition, and sung performance vs. reading), the role of tradition and individual authorship, the complex relation between epic and history, the use of epic in historiography, the practice of re-writing and the constitution of literary cycles. During the second half of this research seminar, students will be required to study and present selected further epic texts, concentrating on the representation of the relationship between kings and vassals and other questions of political and historical interest. They will be expected to further develop their presentations in written term papers.

A brief general introduction to medieval Occitan literature will be followed by the study of a specific corpus, author, or genre, or a particular aspect of this literature. Apart from troubadour lyric, genres such as romance, epic, hagiography etc. may also be covered. Participants will become acquainted with the literature and culture of Southern France and its relationship to other European cultures.

Through the reading and interpretation of a central literary text of Middle French literature, students will discover the linguistic, intellectual, and societal changes of the late Middle Ages. Each participant will study and present an additional text, or group of texts, thus further exploring specific aspects of the literature of this period.

An in-depth study of the Roman de la Rose, one of the most influential texts of medieval French literature, combining close reading and reflection on the theoretical concept of allegory. The first half of the term will be dedicated to the interpretation of the first part of the romance, composed by Guillaume de Lorris, and to the gathering and comparison of different definitions and concepts of allegory, from ancient, medieval, and modern writers. Students will give short presentations on specific definitions based on small groups of sources. During second half of the term, we will read and interpret Jean de Meun's second part of the romance and get some idea of its reception. Students will give presentations either on specific passages of the text in comparison with its sources or on later texts in comparison with Jean de Meun’s work.

Intensive study to the problems connected with the reception of classical antiquity in the context of medieval France, based on vernacular literary texts. The first half of term will be dedicated to close reading. In the second half of term, students will present papers on specific aspects which may take into account additional texts.

Introduction to the various aspects of the evolution of Romance languages from Latin up to the first literary texts. Particular attention will be paid to Vulgar Latin and to the linguistic, political, social, and cultural contexts of the first written documents in each of the Romance languages. Participants may choose examples connected with the languages they specialize in. They will also learn to make linguistic descriptions of medieval vernacular texts (which will enable them to edit such texts).

Introduction to medieval French historiography, centering around individual texts and specific themes. An introduction in lecture form will be followed by a first sequence of close reading of the selected text or texts. In the second half of term, students will present papers on specific aspects, taking into account parallel texts, including Latin ones.