Studies in Medieval Literature (422-0-20)

Topic

Building Character

Instructors

Katharine Helen Breen

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Thurs 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course aims to produce an account of literary character-making in the Middle Ages and beyond. We will begin by examining the rhetorical treatises and schoolroom exercises that put person-making at the center of classical and medieval educational programs, indeed treated it as an essential part of becoming a well-educated adult, as well as a vital moral exercise of putting one's self in somebody else's shoes. We will then go on to read a series of early texts whose character-making proved to be especially influential, including all or part of Prudentius' gruesome Psychomachia, Boethius' stately Consolation of Philosophy, Mechthild of Magdeburg's erotically charged Flowing Light of the Godhead, Chaucer's comical House of Fame, and Langland's politically volatile Piers Plowman. Are these premodern characters relatively homogenous, or do they differ in important respects? How are they similar to, and how are they different from, modern novelistic characters? More broadly, how are they "good to think with"? What kinds of reading practices do they encourage or discourage? As we seek to answer these questions, we will read a range of critical and theoretical texts about character formation that will lay the groundwork for students' final presentations and papers, which may consider non-novelistic characters in medieval and/or post-medieval literary works