SoSe 22: MÜ-Medieval English Literatures: Seeing Theology: Religious Orthodoxy and the Middle English Visionary Text"
Joshua Easterling
Kommentar
This course is an introduction to the literature of visionary and revelatory experience in England (ca. 1380 – 1420). Without exception, the Middle English (dream)visions that we will read – Pearl, A Revelation of Purgatory, as well as excerpts from William Langland’s Piers Plowman and Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love – at once gave voice to and challenged the deeply conservative attitudes toward religious visions on the part of the late medieval clerical establishment within England but also beyond its borders. It is in this context that the course also examines the discourse of spiritual caution, or discretio spirituum, which became a mainstay of religious instruction during this period and to which inter alia several of the remaining writings that we will be reading gave eloquent expression. In various ways, these texts are centrally concerned with the dynamic relationship among religious experiences, the authority of the official church to pronounce on their veracity, as well as the encroachment of lay spirituality into the domain of clerical elites.
Students enrolling for this course should have a solid background as readers of Middle English. Beyond the few print texts required for the course there will be several additional primary and secondary resources available through blackboard. Students are expected to (print out and) bring to class all texts to be discussed during our regular meetings.
Pearl, I – X
Pearl, XI – XX
Langland, Piers Plowman, selections 1 Langland, Piers Plowman, selections 2 Pistle of Discrecioun
Tretis of Discrecyon
Chastising of God’s Children, selections
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, selections 1 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, selections 2 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, selections 3
Nicholas Love, Mirror, selections 1 Nicholas Love, Mirror, selections 2 A Revelation of Purgatory
TEXTS:
Pearl, ed. Sarah Stanbury (Medieval Institute Publications, 2001). ISBN-13: 978-1580440332
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman
, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (Everyman, 1995). ISBN-13: 978-0460875097The Writings of Julian of Norwich, eds. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). ISBN-13: 978-0271025476
Additional Readings
Schließen14 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung