Instructor: Theresa Gross-Diaz
Fridays, 2 pm-5pm,
September 28- December 7, 2007
Course Description
Medieval thinkers wrote commentaries on nearly every
imaginable genre of text, from law codes and Scripture to prophecies and
contemporary fiction. Commentaries - explanations and interpretations of
important texts - have drawn increasing attention from medievalists as sources
for understanding the ways medieval people studied, taught, expressed complex
and original ideas, and organized information. Yet many students of the Middle
Ages rarely or never encounter this form of writing or think about it critically
while in graduate school. This course will be an interdisciplinary
introduction to the wide range of commentary literature, and a survey of recent
trends and approaches in utilizing commentaries in various fields. We will
both address the secondary literature and tackle some commentaries directly.
While most of the commentaries we will look at were written in Latin, a few are
in vernaculars, and we will even investigate images as commentary*. The aim is
to introduce students to the wonderful potential of commentaries and the
creative ways they can be used to better understand the Middle Ages.
The Newberry is particularly well equipped to support such a course. Not only are hard-to-find secondary sources and editions present in the Library (such as Aurora: Petri Rigae Biblia versificata: A Verse Commentary on the Bible, Notre Dame 1965), but manuscripts and incunables that comprise commentary in varying forms will allow students to work with the well-known (e.g. Aquinas' commentary on the Sentences, MS 67.3) and the less familiar (e.g. Haly ibn Ridwan on [Ps-] Ptolemy, MS Ayer 744) in their original medieval formats. Students will have at least one exercise based on a choice of manuscript or incunable from the collection. The instructor, who has previously taught at the Newberry, has published on various medieval Psalms commentaries and is currently writing a book on the subject.
*(In most cases the commentaries studied in
class will be available in English or other modern language translation;
however, some knowledge of Latin will be useful.)