 | | | | | Course module | | LET-LETKM006 | | Category | | - | | Language of instruction | | English | | Offered by | | Radboud University; Faculty of Arts; Letterkunde; | | Lecturer(s) | | | | | Academic year | | 2022 | | | Period | | | PER 2 | (07/11/2022 to 29/01/2023) |
| | Starting block | | | PER 2 | |
| | Course mode | | | full-time | |
| | Remarks | | Accessible to exchange students. | | Registration using OSIRIS | | Yes | | Course open to students from other faculties | | Yes | | Pre-registration | | No | | Waiting list | | No | | Placement procedure | | - |
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- Participants have expanded their knowledge of medieval and early modern literature by having examined writings belonging to the mantic arts, a type of technical literature outside the historical belletristic canon.
- They are able to analyse historical primary sources with the help of modern critical sources.
- They understand and can apply principles of manuscript studies to late medieval and early modern texts in their original contexts.
- They are able to independently analyse a medieval or early modern text, to formulate a well-informed thesis about the text, and to communicate their ideas effectively to their peers and the academic community.
- They consolidate or expand their knowledge of philological methods by studying a medieval or early modern text in its original form.
- They know how the mantic arts function as a scientific concept in pre-Modernity.
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Curiosity for, and anxiety about the future is something that we have in common. People who plan for the future, which includes those who study at university, speculate that the future will bring them what they prepare for. Yet who is to say that the shape of the future coincides with your desires? You may, for instance, pursue an MA in literary studies to prepare for a quiet life of huisje, boompje, beestje. Yet after a brilliant PhD in medieval eschatological plague literature, you end up advising the government on post-pandemic societies, only to continue your career as a successful influencer advertising miracle cures on Instagram. Sure enough, experience, logic, statistics, and algorithms may indicate what is likely going to happen to you, but they cannot offer certainty. If you really want to know what will happen, you would have to consult a diviner, that is, a person who is somehow equipped to bridge the gap between the present and the future. In a way, diviners are the occult counterparts to student counsellors and loopbaanadviseurs, but with considerably less standing in present-day society. Historically speaking, though, diviners were consulted on a wide range of human concerns, for instance, to foretell the course of life of a new-born child (a girl born on the ninth day after new moon will be studious), to interpret dreams (to dream of a donkey means hard work), to schedule medical procedures (bloodletting on 3 September is a bad idea), or to predict what is going to happen in a new year (if in the new year it thunders first on a Friday, it signifies the death of cattle).
This course introduces students to historical techniques from the mantic arts in antique, medieval, and early modern times (from a theoretical angle primarily). We will use digital facsimiles of original written sources that were copied by practitioners and scribes alike. Some scribes copied out mantic texts commercially, while others were professional diviners who offered their services to communities that had not yet reduced the comprehensive art of foretelling the future to the weather forecast and the daily horoscope in the newspaper. We'll of course also make use of important concepts in literary studies, such as reception, materiality, and authorship.
The sources that we will work with are tailored to the linguistic expertise of the participants. It is, for instance, possible to work with (historical dialects and regional variants of) Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Swedish, or Welsh. The written assignment may be submitted in English, Dutch, French, or German.
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The final grade is the result of a final written assignment submitted at the end of the course. The final written assignment may take one of three forms: (1) an essay on a text, technique, or topic, (2) an edition of a historical source text, or (3) an introduction to a new of method of divination that you developed based on historical techniques.
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| | | Required materialsLiterature| Title | : | | Reading materials will be distributed during the course. |
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Instructional modesTestsEssay| Test weight | | 100 |
| Test type | | Project |
| Opportunities | | Block PER 2, Block PER 3 |
Minimum grade5,5
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