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The writings of Teresa of Ávila and the Spanish mystics, most notably John of the Cross and Luis de León, aroused passionate responses when they were composed. Though today’s students realize that religious beliefs have wide-ranging consequences, they are presented with particular challenges in studying the Spanish mystics because of their unfamiliarity with the linguistic, social, and religious history of early modern Spain. This volume is designed to help instructors elicit students’ curiosity, sympathy, and appreciation for writings that can at first seem alien or confusing.
Part 1, “Materials,” recommends accessible editions and translations; print, electronic, and visual resources; background and critical studies; and sources on the philosophical and theological responses to the Spanish mystics. Part 2, “Approaches,” presents methods for teaching the historical contexts of and various theoretical perspectives on the mystics’ works. Contributors consider these authors in relation to Islamic and Jewish mysticism, the traditions of women’s writing, feminism, theology, and autobiography. They also recommend ways to teach particular texts in different kinds of courses and institutions.
This Approaches to Teaching volume aims to provide students with a vision of Chaucer that highlights the great variety, breadth, and depth of his entire body of work. Although Chaucerians recognize that Troilus and Criseyde and the shorter poems are as entertaining and complex as the more familiar Canterbury Tales, teachers of medieval English do not readily include these texts in their courses. The materials collected here offer instructors ideas and strategies for making Chaucer’s lesser-taught works as memorable and engrossing for students as any of the narrative gems in Canterbury Tales.
Part 1, “Materials,” discusses available teaching resources, focusing not only on the many editions of Chaucer’s works in Middle English but also on translations for teachers whose students turn to modern English as a study aid.
The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” begin by exploring the poetry’s backgrounds, including sources and genre; the growth of the English vernacular as a literary language; Chaucer’s conception of history in its Christian, classical, and English political senses; the role of manuscript study in illuminating the historical record; and Chaucer’s representation of gender. The section on teaching the poems features essays that offer suggestions for overcoming students’ difficulties with Middle English, consider the relation between Chaucer and his readers, assess various theoretical models, and show how a wide range of visual imagery can be used in the classroom. A final section on course contexts includes essays on teaching these poems for the first time, as well as designing classes for nonmajors and graduate students. The volume concludes with an appendix on reading Chaucer aloud with students.
Each book contains a CD featuring performances of the Song of Roland.
The Song of Roland is a well-known hallmark of medieval French literature, yet students often read only excerpts and receive general introductions to the poem and its context. The challenges of teaching Roland include its age and subject matter, its form and composition in Old French, and its representation of Christians and Muslims. This volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature aims to help nonspecialist instructors teach Roland more comprehensively and to offer seasoned medievalists ways to invigorate their pedagogical tactics. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys available editions, a wide range of secondary studies devoted to the poem, and electronic aids to teaching. Essays in part 2, “Approaches,” elaborate on the poem’s contexts, avatars, language techniques, and characters and episodes; describe the diverse classroom strategies that experienced instructors have implemented; and review the voluminous critical canon about the poem.
The musical quality of the Song of Roland is vital for students to grasp. A compact disc accompanying the volume showcases reconstructions of sung performances of the Song of Roland in Old French. The examples offered here illuminate the rich quality of Roland’s archaic language and demonstrate a few efforts to recover its lost music. Paired with performances of Roland are melodies used as models for singing the poem.
This new bibliography of over 1,300 Chaucer references builds on a rich tradition of vigorous scholarship, starting with Caroline Spurgeon’s 1925 landmark compilation, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357–1900. Since the publication of Spurgeon’s volume, two additional bibliographic tools became available to Chaucer scholars: the Short-Title Catalogue, which lists books printed in English from 1475 to 1640, and the University Microfilms project, which makes microfilm versions of those books available to researchers. Chaucer’s Fame lists Chaucer references, allusions, and echoes for books listed in the STC, incorporates and emends all 300 of Spurgeon’s references to books in English, and presents additional Chaucer references unearthed by scholars since 1925, some of which are here published for the first time.
The inaugural volume in the MLA’s popular Approaches to Teaching World Literature series comprises bibliographic and instructional essays devoted to the first great English poet. The consultant editor, Florence H. Ridley, notes in her introduction, “As teachers we are faced with the challenge of enabling our students to see how Chaucer’s poetry passes the ultimate test of the world’s greatest literature.” The pieces collected here address the special difficulties of introducing students to Chaucer’s language and his political, social, and intellectual milieu.
Like other books in the Approaches series, this volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys editions, anthologies, recommended student readings, recordings, films, and other instructional aids. In part 2, “Approaches,” fifteen teachers discuss how to present Chaucer in settings ranging from survey courses for nonmajors to seminars devoted to the author. Readers will find within a variety of useful information, including discussions of Chaucer’s cultural context, the representation of women in medieval literature, and the theme of pilgrimage in fourteenth-century poetry.
During recent decades, the study of Beowulf has flourished in liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and high schools. Useful for new instructors as well as medieval scholars, this collection of twenty-eight essays suggests ways to teach the poem to undergraduate, graduate, and mixed classes, in Old English or in translation.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, Approaches to Teaching Beowulf is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews the many editions and translations of Beowulf and evaluates reference works, aids to teaching, critical studies, and facsimiles. The second, “Approaches,” begins with a survey of how and to whom Beowulf is taught, followed by four sections of essays on teaching the poem at specific levels of instruction. The last two sections of essays offer ideas for presenting the background of the poem (history, religion, oral tradition) and for using special approaches, such as discussing the role of women in the poem and teaching Beowulf as performance.
In Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, instructors who have taught Arthurian material in contexts from high school to graduate school draw on their experience to address a range of challenges: Where does one begin a course that embraces the most important continuous tradition of British literary history? Which works from which periods and countries should one include? What kinds of background sources in mythology and Celtic tradition are most helpful? What is the place of history, art, music, or film in such a course?
This volume, like others in the Approaches series, is divided into two parts. “Materials” surveys editions of medieval and modern texts and anthologies and highlights reference works, supplemental readings, and aids to teaching. “Approaches” contains twenty-five essays on teaching Arthuriana. Topics include background studies, interdisciplinary courses, major authors (e.g., Chrètien de Troyes, Gottfried, Wolfram, Malory, and Tennyson), and specific pedagogical approaches such as teaching the Arthurian tradition through film, popular culture, and archaeology.
Accompanying lessons, readings, and songs available online for free.
An Introduction to Old Occitan is the only textbook in print for learning the language used by the troubadours in southern France during the Middle Ages. Each of the thirty-two chapters discusses a subject in the study of the language (e.g., stressed vowels, subjunctive mood) and includes an exercise based on a reading of an Occitan text that has been edited afresh for this volume. An essential glossary analyzes every occurrence of every word in the readings and gives cognates in other Romance languages as well as the source of each word in Latin or other languages. The book also contains a list of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes and a dictionary of proper names.
Anyone who has recently attended a professional meeting devoted to medieval drama or witnessed a revival of a medieval play knows that the genre is alive and flourishing. This volume offers help for new teachers of these works, encourages experienced teachers to rethink classroom presentation of familiar plays, and suggests new ways for all teachers to integrate medieval drama into undergraduate courses.
Like other books in the Approaches series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions, translations, and anthologies of medieval drama and discusses useful secondary readings for both students and instructors. In the second part, “Approaches,” seventeen essays present a rich array of ideas for teaching medieval English drama, from the liturgical texts of the tenth century to the morality plays and cycle plays of the fifteenth century. Several authors focus on particular classroom strategies; others apply methodologies informed by theoretical approaches such as feminism, semiotics, and anthropology; still others discuss staging and performance of the plays.
The contributors to this collection believe that Dante can be enjoyed by college students at every level whether or not they are literature or language majors. Primarily addressing instructors who teach the poem in translation, sixteen scholars suggest a variety of strategies and critical methods that will prove useful and informative to both experienced and novice teachers.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews commonly taught translations of the Divine Comedy, important reference works, background readings for teachers and students, and classroom aids such as paintings and illustrations. In the second part, “Approaches,” an introductory essay by Giovanni Cecchetti identifies nine key themes, ranging from Dante as the new Ulysses and the new Aeneas to Dante as poet and protagonist, that can structure an initial reading of the Divine Comedy. Other contributors take different perspectives including religious, political, and literary; apply several methodologies such as linguistic, typological, and analytical; and compare Dante with major modern authors like Proust and Joyce.
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