Fall 2022 Syllabus

Course Goals and Learning Outcomes

Through the critical study and analysis of a selection of literary, artistic, religious, philosophical, and scientific works from a period of intense social, political, and cultural change, students will become familiar with the ways early modern Europeans constructed and confronted:

issues of political and religious authority
social and gender hierarchies
conceptions of the self and its ability to comprehend the world
the nature of artistic, literary, and musical expression
interactions with non-European societies and civilizations

After successfully completing the course, students will demonstrate their understanding of particular texts and other sources, as well as their command of the reading, writing, and analytical skills key humanistic disciplines (i.e. art, history, literature, philosophy) use to study them. In addition, students will be able to undertake sustained critical evaluations of the period’s central cultural and historical dynamics through extended writing and research projects.

Lectures: To limit the risk of spreading COVID-19, recorded lectures, along with handouts and other supporting materials, will be posted to the “All Conferences” Moodle Page in advance of the week. You may watch them at any time prior to your first conference for the week.

Please note: Because of potential copyright issues, all lectures, handouts, images, and other supporting materials should not be circulated outside the course. You are encouraged to refer to lectures and supporting materials in conference and papers, but do not quote, cite, or circulate them outside the scope of HUM 211 without permission from the lecturer.

E-Reserves: Can be obtained through the “HUM 211 E-reserves” link in the top section of the “All Conferences” Moodle page or the links on the electronic version of the syllabus posted on the HUM 211-212 webpage.

Books for Purchase

Note: To allow conversations in class, it is important that everyone in conference be reading the same edition of the course texts. The editions listed here (and available in the bookstore) have been chosen with an eye to keeping costs low and scholarly standards high.

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford) 
Dante, The Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri: Inferno, trans. J. Hollander (Doubleday) 
Rice and A. Grafton, Foundations of Early Modern Europe (Norton)
Baxandall, Painting & Experience in 15th-Century Italy (Oxford) 
Castiglione, Book of the Courtier (Penguin) 
Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, Ed. Wootton (Hackett)
Thomas More, Utopia, Ed. Logan (Cambridge) 
Bernal Diaz, Conquest of New Spain (Penguin) 
Rabelais, Gargantua & Pantagruel, trans. J. M. Cohen (Penguin)† 
M. de Montaigne, Essays, trans. Cohen (Penguin, 1993)†
Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, trans. Paul Chilton (Penguin, 2004)
Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (University of Chicago Press)

Note: To allow conversations in class, it is important that everyone in conference be reading the same edition of the course texts. The editions listed at the end of this syllabus (and available in the bookstore) have been chosen with an eye to keeping costs low and scholarly standards high.

†Editions so marked differ in pagination from others with this title by the same publisher; if you buy a different edition, be sure to consult one of the editions on reserve in order to arrive at the correct pagination for your edition.

WEEK I (August 29 - September 2)

Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale

Forum: The Medieval Mediterranean and Renaissance Humanities (Breen, Katz, Martínez Valdivia)

WEEK II (September 5 – 9)

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 2 ("The Existence of God"), Question 4 ("The Perfection of God"), Question 76 ("The Union of Body and Soul"), Question 103 ("The Government of Things in General").

The Summa is available at www.newadvent.org/summa. The required reading is at the following sites:

Please note that each question has multiple parts. Be sure to read them all. Copies of this reading will also be on reserve.

Averroës, Faith and Reason in Islam: Averroes' Exposition of Religious Arguments, 16-44. (e-reserve)

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Prologue, chapters 9-10, 15-16, 18-20, & 23. (e-reserve)

Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, pp. 15-54 [recommended] & 349-63. (e-reserve)

Lecture: Race and Space in the Middle Ages (Faletra)

WEEK III (September 12-16)

Dante, Divine Comedy: Inferno.

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700, 4-34

Optional: Rice/Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1-109.

Lecture: Dante as a Moral Thinker (Faletra)

WEEK IV (September 19-23 )

Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in 15th-Century Italy, 29-93 [optional: 1-27, 94-108].

Randolph Starn, “Seeing Culture in a Room for a Renaissance Prince,” in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 205-232. (e-reserve)

Alberti, “On Painting” Italian Art 1400-1500. (e-reserve)

Dominique Raynaud, “Why Did Geometrical Optics Not Lead to Perspective in Medieval Islam? Rationality and Good Reason in the Anthropology of Mathematics,” in Raymond Boudon: A Life in Sociology, ed. Mohamed Cherkaoui and Peter Hamilton (Oxford: Bardwell, 2009), 243-266. (e-reserve)

Lecture: The Arts of Perspective (Katz)

WEEK V (September 26 - September 30 )

Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, Prologue, 31-36; Book I, 39-46, 51-98, 102-104; Book II, 107-133, 199-202; Book III, 207-231, 274-278; Book IV, 281-282, 288-304, 315-345.

Lecture: On Ease and Self-Fashioned Illusions (Martínez-Valdivia)

WEEK VI (October 3 - 7)

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (entire; in Selected Political Writings).

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, Book I: Preface, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 55; Book II: Chapter 2; Book III: Chapter 41 (in Selected Political Writings).

Optional: Rice/Grafton, Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 110-45.

Lecture: Civic Virtue and Princely Power (Breen)

WEEK VII (October 10 - 14)

Thomas More, Utopia.

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700, 35-87.

Lecture: The Rhetoric of Common Wealth (Martínez-Valdivia)

Week of October 17-21: FALL BREAK

WEEK VIII (October 24 - October 28)

"Letter from Columbus to Luis de Santangel," American Journeys Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society Digital Library and Archives, pp. 261-272. This reading is available online: www.americanjourneys.org (Document No. AJ-063). Please press “Print or Download” for a pdf of the reading.

Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol, “Conquest, Reason, and Cannibalism in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Manuscript,” The Art Bulletin, 104:2 (Summer 2022): 47-62 (e-reserve)

Lia Markey, “Stradano’s Allegorical Invention of the Americas in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 385-442. (e-reserve)

Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography & the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps, & Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 23-46 [pp. 1-22 recommended] (e-reserve)

Lecture: Crusade, Commerce, and Christianization (Breen)

WEEK IX (October 31 - November 4)

Bartolomé de Las Casas, “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies,” pp. 3-30, 42-56. (e-reserve).

Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, 85-99, 107-118, 166-188, 189-204, 216-219, 232-235, 245-257, 278-304, 353-413.

Hernan Cortes, “Letters from Mexico,” First Letter (pp. 3-46). (e-reserve)

James Lockhart, ed., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico pp. 1-21, 27-37, 48, 70-88, 114-122, 138-156, 180-184, 214-220, 224, 246-254. (e-reserve).

“Requerimiento — 1510.” The reading is available online.

Lecture: Representing the Spaces of Conquest (Katz)

WEEK X (November 7 - 11)

Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian” in Luther, Three Treatises, pp. 277-316 (e-reserve).

S. Lotzer, “Twelve Articles of the Peasantry,” from The German Peasant War of 1525 (e-reserve).

Luther, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants,” from Luther’s Works, vol 46 (e-reserve).

Jean Calvin, “Of Eternal Election” & “On Resistance and Magistracy” from Institutes of the Christian Religion (e-reserve).

Lecture: Popular Piety and the Reformation from Below (Breen)

WEEK XI (November 14 - 18)

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel: 1) Pantagruel, Prologue and chapters 1-9, 16, 23-34 and 2) Gargantua, Prologue and chapters 1, 3-8, 14-17, 21-32, 34-36, 48-58 [note: Gargantua is a “prequel” to Pantagruel]. If you are using the 2006 edition edited by M. A. Screech, the pages to read are Pantagruel pp. 11-62; 86-91; 118-164 and Gargantua, pp. 203-211; 215-233; 250-260; 268-307; 313-319; 356-379.

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, pp. 59-101. (e-reserve).

Lecture: The Abyss of Learning (Faletra)

WEEK XII (November 21 - 23)

Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, Prologue, First Day: all; Second Day: Prologue, stories 15 & 17-20; Third Day: Prologue, story 22; Fourth Day: Prologue, stories 33, 36-37; Fifth Day: Prologue, stories 42-44; 48; 50; Sixth Day: Prologue, stories 51 & 58-60; Seventh Day: Prologue, story 61.

Lecture: Worldly Wit and Divine Wisdom (Breen)

November 24 - 27: NO CLASS (THANKSGIVING BREAK)

WEEK XIII (November 28 - December 2)

Michel de Montaigne, Essays: “On the Power of Imagination,” “On Cannibals,” “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes,” “On Experience.”

Lecture: The Complexity of Montaigne's Skepticism (Bedau)