Pound, Ezra. “The Seafarer.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 26 May 2020.
Further Reading
Bergvall, Caroline. Drift. Nightboat Books, 2014.
Greenfield, Stanley B. “Sylf, Seasons, Structure, and Genre in The Seafarer.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 9, 1981, pp. 199-211.
Lees, Clare A., and Gillian R. Overing. The Contemporary Medieval in Practice. UCL Press, 2019.
The Lighthouse. Directed by Robert Eggers, performances by Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, and Valeriia Kalaman, A24, 2019.
Matto, Michael. “True Confessions: ‘The Seafarer’ and Technologies of the ‘Sylf.’” The Journal of Germanic and English Philology, vol. 103, no.2, 2004, pp. 156-79.
Olsen, Alexandra, and Burton Raffel, eds. “The Seafarer.” Poems and Prose from the Old English. Yale UP, 1998. P. 10.
Treharne, Elaine, ed. “The Seafarer.” Old and Middle English c. 890-c. 1450: An Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. pp. 48-53.
Erin T. Dailey, ‘Misremembering St. Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Benjamin Pohl et al. (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 117–40.
Discussion Questions
What were the possibilities and limitations of monastic life for early medieval women?
What might this letter tell us about Merovingian women’s literacy?
What is asceticism? How is it depicted in this letter?
Bibliography (available as e-books through library subscriptions)
Angelo Di Berardino, ed. Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers’ Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994-2013), pp. 1:407 (biography of Caesaria) and 3:374 (biography of Radegund).
Jo Ann McNarama and John E. Halborg, with E. Gordon Whately, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 112-8.
Further Reading (available online through library subscriptions)
Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250).” The Art Bulletin 72: 3 (1990), pp. 414–435.
Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poiters’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 25-59.
Mussis, Gabriele de’. “The Arrival of the Plague.” In The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox, 14-26. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Muisis, Gilles. “The Plague Seen from Tournai.” In The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox, 45-47. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Villani, Giovanni. “Chronicle.” In John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents, 19-20. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Discussion Questions
In this petition, the inhabitants of Caffa ask for money, soldiers, and a bishop. Why do they need each of those things? Why do they turn to the doge of Genoa for help?
At the time when this petition was written, had anyone in Caffa shown symptoms of plague? If so, which symptoms? If not, why did the petition mention “an endless plague of death”?
Compare what this source says about the early transmission of the Black Death with the account of Gabriele de’ Mussis. Based on what you know about modern medical research on plague transmission, which version makes more sense? Based on what you know about medieval ideas about disease and contagion, which version would make more sense to medieval readers?
Compare what this source says about the early transmission of the Black Death with another source from the list of Further Reading – Primary Sources. How are the two accounts similar? How are they different? What do you think the differences imply?
English translation of Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Trans. Dan Attrell and David Porecca, Pennsylvania State UP, 2019. Google Books snippet view, p. 146-7 and 193-4
What comparisons can be made with earlier Iberian texts featuring older women go-betweens? Consider Trotaconventos with Don Melon y Doña Endrina in Juan Ruiz’s 14c Libro de bueno amor, and Celestina with Calisto and Melibea in Fernando de Rojas’s 16c La Celestina/La Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Consider strategies used by the go-betweens, the linguistic or material tools used, the punishments that occurred, and possible motivations.
Why is the necromancer portrayed as Moorish in the historical context of the Morisco expulsion (1609-1614)? What does distancing of magical practice do?
Compare this novela and earlier or contemporaneous Iberian Arabic grimoires. Consider love spells in texts like the Picatrix (13c translation of 10c Arabic Ghāyat al-Hakīm) or the 16/17c Aljamiado Libro de dichos maravillosos. What items were necessary for the spells—both in the novela and the grimoires—and what were the intended results? Are such comparisons fruitful?
Consider the novelas in the context of contemporary movements like #metoo. Are these stories similar? How is the complexity of gender relations nuanced as both men and women contributed to doña Inés’s unjust suffering?
*Warning:* This video contains some graphic and disturbing descriptions which may not be suitable for all viewers.
Primary Source Document
A translation of the remission letter granted to Antonie van Claerhout in 1455 can be found in Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier, Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble. Pardon Letters in the Burgundian Low Countries, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2015, p. 116–18.
Discussion questions
1. Read a pardon letter or a petition for pardon. What do you notice about the rhetorical techniques and legal arguments used by the petitioner to support their demand for pardon?
2. How is violence described in pardon letters? What does that tell us about the medieval attitudes to violence?
3. Why could it be in the interest of a king or a prince to grant pardons? Does the late medieval use of pardoning threaten to deteriorate public order?
4. To what extent was royal pardon connected to the Christian notions of justice and mercy? Check the related vocabulary used in a pardon letter to elaborate on this question.
Online Resources
The Himanis Project website, transcribing and indexing some of the French Trésor des chartes that recorded remission letters.
The Calendars of the patent rolls preserved in the Public record office, available on the HathiTrust website, describe royal pardons granted by the English Crown.
Other Readings (available to purchase as e-books or online via library subscriptions)
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).
Erin T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and the Women of the Merovingian Elite (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
Guy Halsall, ‘The Preface to Book V of Gregory of Tours’ Histories: Its Form, Contents, and Significance’ The English Historical Review 122:496 (2007), pp. 297-317.
Alexander C. Murray, Gregory of Tours: The Merovingians (Peterborough: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
Alexander C. Murray, ed., A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Boston: Brill, 2016).
Ian Wood and Kathleen Mitchell, eds, The World of Gregory of Tours (Boston: Brill, 2002).
Megan L. Cook and Elizaveta Strakhov, eds., John Lydgate’s Dance of Death and Related Works (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2019). A free online edition accessible to students, with linked explanatory and textual notes and introductory material.
John Lydgate, The Dance of Death, ed. Florence Warren and Beatrice White. EETS o.s. 181. (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971). This edition is much less easy to follow than Cook and Strakhov’s but its introduction contains useful information, particularly about manuscript history.
Questions
How do modern interpretations of danse macabre respond to the medieval tradition beyond the replication of the skeleton images themselves (i.e. in Saint-Saëns’ music)?
What are the impacts of presenting this performance in an outdoor setting as opposed to framed by architecture or other structural elements? (Another interesting example to discuss might be the ending Bergman’s Seventh Seal, which includes a famous outdoor danse macabre.)
What do you notice about the different kinds of interstitial or in-between space in this painting – between stone and paint, people and paint, and between the people and skeletons in the painting? What do you perceive as happening in those spaces?
Danse macabre seems to use its combination of text, art, architecture, and performance to acknowledge an important reality that death both is and is not an equalizer. How might we use the imagery and tradition of danse macabre to talk about this idea in our own time and understand it better?
How do danse macabre’s visual and poetic aspects give us some new languages for thinking about experiences of repetitiveness, especially where the only structure becomes one of underlying anxiety or dread rather than the usual things that structure us?
Secondary Sources
Seeta Chaganti, “‘A Certain Slant of Light’: Reenacting Danse macabre as Dance,” in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 99-143. The University of Chicago Press has graciously made a pdf of this chapter available, free of charge. Please visit the University of Chicago Press for more information about my book.
Amy Appleford, Learning to Die in London, 1380-1450 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
Elina Gertsman, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).
Cathy Park Hong. “The Slur I Never Expected to Hear in 2020.” New York Times 16 April 2020. Related to my point about personifying and embodying death, this piece is an excellent and important meditation on anti-Asian sentiment and who is seen to embody COVID-19.
—–. Imago Mortis: Mediating Images of Death in Late Medieval Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Sophie Oosterwijk and Stefanie Knöll, eds., Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).
There are numerous scholarly editions of the original Old French, some with facing-page modern French translations. Unfortunately, the majority of those available on-line are both old and not reliable. The one good scholarly edition available on-line is that of Karl Warnke, however the introduction and notes are all in German.
Scholarly edition and translation into modern French (most recent of several available):
Nathalie Koble, Mireille Séguy ed & trans., Lais bretons (XIIe-XIIIe siècles): Marie de France et ses contemporains (Paris: Éditions Honoré Champion, 2018).
There are two excellent English translations (not freely available on-line, but with many inexpensive used copies available via on-line booksellers):
Gly Burgess and Keith Busby, trans. The Lais of Marie De France With Two Further Lais in the Original Old French (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) (ebook and paperback).
Robert W. Hanning and Joan M. Ferrante, trans., The Lais of Marie de France, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995) (paperback).
Digitized manuscripts of the Lais:
The only manuscript with the prologue and all twelve of the (known) lais:
1. One way to understand the construction of the lai is to examine the situation of the protagonist, Lanval. What is Lanval’s problem at the beginning of the lai ? in the middle ? at the end?
2. What does the lai tell us about Lanval (e.g. descriptions by the narrator or by other characters)? How does the text show Lanval behaving? Does he behave like his description? (Be able to point to elements in the text to defend your answer.)
3. Analyze the scene where Lanval meets the fée (fairy). Where does it occur? How is the fée described? How does Lanval react? Etc.
4. How is the queen described/presented? (What is she doing at the beginning of the episode? How does she react when she sees him? How does she interact with Lanval?)
5. What are the “stages” of Lanval’s trial? What exactly is he accused of doing? Do you know any (famous) similar stories?
Laüstic
A. Background:
1. How were marriages decided in the Middle Ages (for the wealthy)? Who chose the husband/wife? with what criteria ? What kinds of results might you expect (for either spouse) under such a system?
B. You and the characters
1. How do you react to each of the characters? Is your reaction positive, negative, ambivalent?
2. For each character, make a list of the qualities and actions that explain your reaction.
3. For each character, explain how the narrator characterizes them (what expressions are used in the text). For whom does the narrator have sympathy? In other words, who does the narrator portray positively? negatively? Try to distinguish between a reaction based on your moral system, your ideas about what is right or correct, and how the story actually presents each of the characters.
C. Medieval literature often uses symbols to suggest feelings and ideas (modern literature does too, of course). What symbolic value does each of the objects take on in the lai?
