Medieval Hagiography and Its Manuscript Transmission

Undervisning

Beskrivelse

This course aims to introduce medieval hagiography, a literary genre describing the lives and deaths of holy persons. The course begins with the development of hagiography as a genre, its origins, classical and Christian influences, transformations, and various methodologies employed in its study. The overview of the approaches commences from the early positivist ones, which aimed to extract historical facts from it to the contemporary postmodern approaches, which read about narrativity, gender, sexuality, space, memory, and environmental issues from the same hagiographical texts. Despite the advancement of scholarship in diverse directions, scholars are still in dire straits regarding the sources - hagiographical texts, either available or unavailable, in critical editions. How does one start hagiographical research today? This course proposes that manuscripts, as worthwhile and rich sources of this literature, should be approached directly. We will examine the quantitative studies, which reveal to us the popularity of this genre in the Middle Ages. We will also enlighten the logistics of studying hagiography and look into available research tools. The final session on hagiography discusses metaphrasis, a widespread practice of rewriting saints’ lives. The class will conclude by familiarizing students with various scripts and writing styles in Latin manuscripts, which are useful for reading hagiography and other genres of medieval literature.
Periode01/01/202431/03/2024
MålgruppePh.d
ECTS-point5,0 ECTS