Department of French
Paper Fr7
Topics in Medieval Studies: Defining the Human
This paper will be offered at Part II from 2012/2013.
This paper, taught through lectures and supervisions, will be organized around various approaches to medieval concepts of humanity and human identity. Texts covered will span the period from c. 1150 to c. 1450. On the one hand, we will examine the various categories of difference that define and structure human identity in medieval thought, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and religious or other cultural practices. On the other hand, we will look at the shifting and sometimes permeable boundaries that divide the human from other categories of being, such as animals, angels, fairies, demons, and monsters.
Most fundamentally, medieval thought defined a human as a being comprised of an immortal, rational soul and a mortal body. This allowed distinction from animals, who lacked rationality and an immortal soul, as well as from fairies - whose bodies are immortal - and angels or demons, who have no material bodies at all. The so-called monstrous races - giants, pygmies, dog-headed races - form a more ambiguous category, and their depiction in medieval texts varies from the clearly human to the bestial. Even seemingly more clear-cut distinctions, however, are problematised in tales of human-animal shape-shifting, or in the legend of the halfbreed human-fairy Melusine. It is fascinating to examine the ways that normally human identity traits, such as aristocratic power, feudal values, masculine or feminine gender characteristics, rationality, and the capacity for sin and redemption, may be found - or distorted - in creatures whose humanity is at stake.
Examination
Please see the specimen exam paper for an example of the current format of the paper.
Further information
Please contact Professor Sylvia Huot sh225@cam.ac.uk to discuss the paper further.
