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This interdisciplinary proseminar is intended for anyone interested in exploring the venerable cultural impulse to locate urgent questions of identity, politics, social relations, and artistic endeavors in relation to a past that authorizes or creates the present. English 630 will meet together with History of Art 655, and will be co-taught by Tom Willette (history of art) and Karla Taylor (literature). Since the course is a proseminar in medieval and early modern studies, we will assume no prior background in either the disciplines or the subject matter; indeed, among our primary goals will be to introduce our disciplines and to subject them to our collective and comparative scrutiny. Throughout, we will be attentive to disciplinary and methodological issues, questions, and modes of proceeding. To this end, we will try to highlight places where our disciplinary orientations lead us to approach differently such matters as style, genre, context, rhetoric, and the circumstances of production and reception of textual and visual materials. We can promise you at least one knock-down-drag-out--but we will also be concerned with ways of constructing conversation across disciplinary lines. The proseminar will explore several broad purposes of the past in medieval and early modern cultures. The past could be used to construct identity in the present; the effort to assimilate an alien past could be a main engine for hermeneutics, allegory, and other forms of re-signifying; the past could support claims of political and cultural legitimacy; and conversely, it could become the site for the oppositional imagination.

Through a series of case studies, we will investigate the varied ways in which myths of the past were created, exposed, and continually reinvented for these (and perhaps other) purposes. We will focus our exploration through such cases as Beowulf and the past as treasure; invented genealogies and other forgeries; the legend of Arthur; the story of Lucretia; architectural spolia and the idea of Rome; the Donation of Constantine and the past as text; visual histories; hagiography and devotional images; and biblical hermeneuetics and the Franciscans. To accommodate the widest range of interested participants, translations will be used whenever necessary.

Seminar participants will give several brief presentations, lead discussions, and write a substantial term essay. (Willette)

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