Seminar: Suffering Men in Medieval Literature
UE-L06.01521
Enseignant(s): Dutton Elisabeth |
Cursus: Master |
Type d'enseignement: Séminaire |
ECTS: 3 |
Langue(s) du cours: Anglais |
Semestre(s): SP-2025 |
A seminar course for MA students. The course will be assessed by seminar paper due September 1st 2025.
In the last decades, medieval scholars have paid considerable, valuable, attention to the female body as it suffers in sex-specific ways such as childbirth, rape, and the peculiarly sexualized tortures inflicted on female martyrs. In this course, we will look at male suffering, exploring the ways in which men suffer, both physically and emotionally, in medieval texts. We will explore religious texts and martyrdom narratives in which men suffer in imitation of the archetypal suffering of Christ; we will consider also narratives of suffering and martyrdom in Judaism and Islam. We will look too at men suffering in more secular narratives: knights suffering physical wounds and emotional blows in romance stories, for example. The title of the course puns on men as sufferers and men as causes of suffering, so some attention will also paid to wives, children and subjects who have to suffer men in charge.
Schedule:
18.02 Out of Eden: the beginning of man’s toil
25.02 Christ’s model sufferings
04.03 Secular suffering I: loneliness and the last survivor
11.03 Secular suffering II: women suffering men
18.03 Suffering spines: Saint Sebastian and King Edmund
25.03 Suffering and swooning in Chaucer
01.04 Suffering and swooning in Malory
08.04 The Suffering of Job in Abrahamic tradition
15.04 The Suffering of Job’s wife
29.04 Noah the hen-pecked husband
06.05 Suffering men in Ta’ziyeh
13.05 Grieving men and lost pearls
20.05 Men suffering islamophobia
27.05 Men and boys suffering antisemitism
Objectifs
- Advanced training in reading Old and Middle English
- Broadening acquaintance with a range of medieval genres
- Introductory knowledge of sources and analogues among Abrahamic traditions
- Developing understanding of medieval ideas about gender and sex