History 379

History 379

Special Topics: Popular Culture in Europe, 1150-1650

Office: Maxey 211 (526-4789)

Office Hours: MW 2:30-4:00 Th 3:00-4:30

The late medieval and early modern centuries saw profound developments in the cultural experience of non-elites in Europe. The development of vernacular literatures, new technologies and new mediums of communication allowed new possibilities for cultural expression. This course will consider a diverse range of sources such as letters, diaries, socio-economic data, art, and satires to explore how urban and rural Europeans experienced societal change. Among the topics included will be the distinction between peasantry, bourgeoisie and nobility, the impact of printing, the history of manners, the invention of privacy, the social cohesion provided by community ritual and the impact of elite culture on popular culture. Because this area of history has been the subject of a great deal of historiographical scrutiny in the last fifty years, special attention will be paid to secondary literature in this course.

Required texts (available for purchase at the Whitman College Bookstore)

Jocelin of Brokeland, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds (Oxford World Classics)

Lester Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Cornell)

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou (Vintage)

Richard Wunderli, Peasant Fires (Indiana)

Steven Ozment, The Burgermeister’s Daughter (Harper Collins)

Natalie Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford)

Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Johns Hopkins)

Course requirements

1. Class attendance and participation. You are expected to attend all class assignments and to participate vigorously, insightfully, and respectfully in class discussions. Discussion will be the primary teaching format for the course. Note that non-attendances is grounds for failing the course.

2. Two short papers introducing reading assignments. Twice during the semester (once before the eighth week and once thereafter) you will need to prepare a paper on that day’s reading assignment and present it to your colleagues. The paper should be one single-spaced page long with an additional page containing at least three discussion questions. These papers are designed to encourage discussion and therefore should make a strong argument regarding the reading. Simple summaries will not provide insight into the reading, so you need to engage with the reading in an original and assertive manner. Please bring a copy of the paper for each member of the class.

3. A midterm paper and a final paper. These two papers (four or five pages each) will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge of the assigned reading. The instructor will provide prompts that require you to synthesize different elements of the course material.

4. A final project. There will be several options for completing this assignment, all of which will require a written paper of approximately six to eight pages.

Evaluation

Your course evaluation will be determined according to the following criteria:

Attendance and participation: 25%

Two short papers:10% each

Midterm and Final paper: 15% each

Final project: 25%

Schedule of meetings and assignments

Week One: Introduction

January 18 Introduction to the course; nuts and bolts session

20 The problem of “high culture” versus “low culture”

Reading:

William Bouwsma, “The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History,” American Historical Review 84 (1979): 1-15, available online through www.jstor.org

Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 1-22 (reserve packet)

Week Two: Early Medieval Foundations

25 Foundations I: Demography and material life

Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, 181-210 (reserve packet)

European population estimates at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.html

27 Foundations II: Belief

Reading:

Basic Christian Prayers (reserve packet)

Selections from the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council online at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-select.html

Guibert of Nogent on relics (reserve packet)

Orderic Vitalis on the priest Walchelin’s vision (reserve packet)

Ceasarius of Heisterbach on the Eucharist (reserve packet)

Week Three: Economic development and social change in the High Middle Ages

Feb 1 The commercial revolution and urbanization

Reading:

Little, 1-96

Guibert of Nogent on the revolt at Laon at

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/guibert-laon.html

The town charter of St. Omer at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1127stomer.html

3 Towns and urban spirituality

Reading:

Little, 113-83 and 197-219

The conversion of Peter Waldo at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/waldo1.html

Selections on Francis of Assisi at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/stfran-lives.html

Week Four: Varieties of Vernacular Culture

8 Courts and “courtly love”

Reading: Constance Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave and Noble, 103- 144 (reserve packet)

Marie de France, the Lais of La Fresne and Lanval (reserve packet)

10 Images of the priest, the peasant, and the cuckold

Reading: Two Old French fabliaux from Fabliaux Fair and Foul, trans. DuVal (reserve packet)

Week Five: Monasticism and Society

15 Introduction to monasticism

Reading: Jocelin of Brokeland, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ix-

xxix; 3-75

17 Autobiography and monastic life

Reading: Jocelin, 76-123

Special guest discussant: Professor Patrick Geary (UCLA), the 2005 Skotheim Lecturer

Week Six: Heresy and Rural Life

22 Cathars in the south of France

Reading Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, vii-xvii; 3-88; 120-35

24 The peasants of Montaillou

Reading: Montaillou, 139-68; 192-203; 306-26; 342-56

Week Seven: Vernacular Expressions of Culture in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century England

March 1

Reading: Chaucer, the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in Middle English (reserve packet)

Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, in modern translation (reserve packet)

3 Special session on the York Mystery plays

Details TBA

****Friday, March 4: Midterm Paper Due****

Week Eight: Peasant Religion in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation

8 Carnivals, feasts, and orthodoxy

Reading: Richard Wunderli, Peasant Fires, 1-90

10 The drummer of Niklashausen

Reading, Wunderli, 91-150

Week Nine: Urban Life in the Age of the Reformation

29 The Reformation and the Cities

Reading: Steven Ozment, The Burgermeister’s Daughter, 1-123

31 The Burgermeister’s Daughter

Ozment, 126-94

Week Ten: Begin work on final projects

April 5 No class (Whitman Undergraduate Conference)

7 No class: individual meetings with instructor

Week Eleven: The Renaissance and Popular Culture in France

12 Rabelais and the Carnivalesque

Reading: Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book I, chapters 1-24 (reserve)

14 Monatainge and the culture of introspection

Reading: Montaigne, “On Cannibals”, “On Measuring Truth and Error” and “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes” (reserve)

Week Twelve: Manners, Technology and Cultural Change

19 Manners and modernity

Reading: Jacques Revel, “The Uses of Civility” in A History of Private Life,

edited by Roger Chartier, 167-205 (reserve)

21 Print culture and popular Culture

Reading: Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, xv-xviii; 97-123; 189-227

Week Thirteen: Gender and Society

26 No class: individual meetings with the instructor

28 Gender trouble in sixteenth-century France

Reading, Davis, 65-97, 124-52

Week Fourteen: How Did Peasants Receive the Written Word?

May 3 The Reformation and Peasant Culture

Reading: Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 1-70

5 Menocchio and “peasant egalitarianism”

Reading: Ginzburg, 70-128

10 Summary and Review (final projects due in class)

Final paper due Saturday, May 14 at 11:00 am