| Unit name | The Comic and Grotesque in Pre-Modern Culture |
|---|---|
| Unit code | FREN20060 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Professor. Marianne Ailes |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of French |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
What made a medieval audience laugh? How can we know if something is meant to be comic? Do the grotesque sculptures on medieval buildings mean anything? The unit will explore a range of visual and textual materials examining the function of the grotesque and the nature of humour. In an age when the majority of people were not literate ‘reading’ the visual was important in popular culture. At the same time neither texts nor image were necessarily lacking in sophistication. This unit will draw upon a range of visual artefacts, from manuscript illumination aimed at the elite, to sculptured grotesques in medieval churches and at several different literary genres, from the frequently erotic fabliaux to the parody of the heroic in a chanson de geste and the word play of Villon’s urban poetry.
Students will develop a more sophisticated understanding of the way medieval literary culture dealt with stereotypes and literary conventions than is possible in the one text studied in year 1 and begin to appreciate the complexities of premodern visual culture. They will have opportunities to consider how text and image may relate to each other in a manuscript context.
The teaching for the unit will exploit the opportunities of technology enhanced learning, including the use of computer software for analysing images, building on their experience of using the online tutorial on ‘how to read an image’ used in the teaching of year 1 unit ‘Shaping France’. Students will be taught how to use the software to analyse images.
The unit includes material from wider medieval Francophonia, specifically looking at a text which survived only in Anglo-Norman and which demonstrates knowledge of extensively disseminated French-language narrative.
Students will be taught through a weekly lecture and a weekly seminar (tutor and student led). Lectures from week 6 will be in French. One session will be held in the library looking at material in the Special Collections. A wiki glossary will be used to develop the correct understanding of technical terms. There will be an opportunity for students to participate in a visit to Bristol Cathedral to look at the misericords.
On successful completion of this unit, a student will be able to demonstrate:
One 50 minute weekly lecture, one 50 minute weekly seminar
Formative
Wiki glossary and an online exhibition - students will work collaboratively.
Summative
1 x commentary (max 1500 words) on visual material to be presented using xerte online software (25%) testing ILO's 1,2,4 & 5
1 x 2500 word essay student's own title (75%) testing ILO's 1-4
Texts
Fabliaux érotiques, ed. Luciano Rossi (Paris: Livre de poche 1992)
Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, ed. Glyn S. Burgess (Edinburgh : British Rencesvals Publications, 1998)
La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin, ed. Gme Picot (Paris : Larousse, 1971)
Le Roman de Renart, ed. Naoyuki Fukunoto, Noboru Harano, Satoru Suzuki, Gabriel Bianciotto (Paris: Livre de poche, 2005)
Secondary Reading
Brian Levy, The Comic Text : Patterns and Images in the Old French Fabliaux (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983) PQ207 LEV
Philippe Ménard, Le Rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois au moyen âge (Geneva : Droz, 1969) PQ156 MEN
Strickland, Debra Higgs, Saracens, Demons & Jews : making monsters in medieval art (Oxford: Princetone University Press, 2003) N5970 STR
