HONR 1130 - Intersections in Medieval Literatures

4 credit hours
In this course students read and study literary works composed between the 5th and the 15th centuries. Readings may include Dante’s Divine Comedy, selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, the Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma, Usama ibn Munqidh’s Book of Contemplation, selections of Arabic and Hebrew lyric poetry, the Japanese poets of Heian Court (e.g., Ono no Komachi or Izumi Shikibu), and/or the Chinese poets of Tang and Sung Dynasties, among others. The seminar analyzes how these medieval works are influenced by intercultural encounters and how they engage with societal, political, and religious concerns. Students will examine and discuss how literary works construct or question notions of identity in a medieval historical context on the basis of gender and sexuality, nation, race or ethnic group, social status, or religious belief and explore how tensions may arise from different ways of understanding these identities and their various configurations and intersections. These works raise questions about issues such as love, secular or religious, war, politics, and the like, which can provide new perspectives on our own contemporary understanding of them.