Università Roma Tre

Strategies of representations of nature in medieval literature of the Germanic area: realistic, symbolic and fantastic images.

The recurring motifs related to the representation of the landscape and the natural environment in the Middle Ages will be identified through the reading of passages taken from works of the Old and Middle English period. The way in which the natural environment and animals characterise the works and interact with the characters will be addressed in particular in texts such as: Beowulf, the Physiologus, The Nun's Priest's Tale by Chaucer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl. Works from the German (Nibelungenlied, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach) and Norse Middle Ages will also be considered.
The philological-literary analysis of the works will be accompanied by the study of the themes of textual criticism (the relationship between text, paratext and miniatures) and of the main lexical, morphological and syntactic changes that have occurred in the English language over the centuries.

Students (who will be guided in their choice of topics and bibliographic material) will be required to submit a paper, individually or in groups, on literary-historical, linguistic and textual topics related to works of the Germanic Middle Ages.

Texts:

- G. Brunetti (ed.), Beowulf, Roma: Carocci, (passi scelti).
- The Complete Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ascp/)
- L. D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1987 (selected passages) .
- The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle English): https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/mect/index.htm
- M. Andrew and R. Waldron, edd., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Exeter: Exeter University Press 2007 (selected passages).
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=Gawain (trad.: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/ready.htm)
- Ursula Schulze, Das Nibelungenlied, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2013 (selected passages)
- Das Nibelungenlied: https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/12Jh/Nibelungen/nib_intr.html
- Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der Ausgabe von
Karl Lachmann, Übers, u. Nachw. v. Wolfgang Sjriewok), Stuttgart, Reclam, 1981 (selected passages).
- Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival: https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/13Jh/Wolfram/wol_pa00.html


Secondary literature:


- Ernst R. Curtius, Letteratura europea e medioevo latino, Scandicci (Firenze): La Nuova Italia,1992 , cap. X. Il paesaggio ideale, pp. 207-226.
- Albrecht Classen, The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.
Hanawalt, Barbara., and Lisa J. Kiser. Engaging with Nature Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Notre Dame, Ind.: U of Notre Dame, 2008.
- Nicholas Howe,, “The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England: Inherited, Invented, Imagined.” In Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, edited by John Howe and Michael Wolfe, Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2002, pp. 91-112.
- Margaret Gelling, The landscape of Beowulf, in Anglo-Saxon England, 32 (2001), pp. 7-11.
- William F. Woods, 2002. 'Nature and the Inner Man in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in The Chaucer Review 36, 3 (2002), pp. 209-27.
- Elizabeth Petroff, “Landscape in ‘Pearl’: The Transformation of Nature.” The Chaucer Review 16, no. 2 (1981), pp. 181–93.

History of medieval English literature:

- D. Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 (chapters1,2,6,21,26).
- P. Boitani, La letteratura del Medioevo inglese, Roma, Carocci 2001.

History of the English Language:

- C. Barber, The English Language: a Historical Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009.

Textual criticism:
- Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda, Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel Medioevo germanico, Roma-Bari: Laterza 2004 (Parte II e III).

Additional bibliographical material (critical editions, glossaries, critical essays etc.) will be provided during the course.