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"To the world when it was half a thousand years younger," wrote Johan Huizinga, "the outlines of things seemed more clearly marked than to us." That world, which we now call the Middle Ages, actually spanned a 1,000-year period and comprised a variety of national and local cultures--a diversity of languages and literatures, social and political institutions and (contrary to rumor) religious beliefs. What held them together was the capacity for vision--seeing in other ways than so-called common-sense and modern science instruct us--but what did it then mean to see? How did the world appear to itself before the age of the camera? Before industrialization polluted the landscape, when the spring really did come up "puddle wonderful"? Before philosophical rationalism split the mind's eye from its body, when monsters haunted hallfires and angels dazzled mortals with their light? We pursue these questions across the medieval centuries, discerning continuities and changes in vision, as we move from Anglo-Saxon England to High Gothic France and Germany, to Italy of the pre-Renaissance.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA COL Grading Mode: Student Option
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-24-2000
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459