English 533: Studies in Medieval Literature

(Chaucer and His Contemporaries):

Sinning in England in the Late Middle Ages

Professor Richard Newhauser

Spring Semester, 2013; W 4:30-7:15, LL 269

Office: LL 226B, Tel.: 480-965-8139
E-mail: Richard.Newhauser@asu.edu, Web site: http://www.public.asu.edu/~rnewhaus/

Office hours: TTh 1:00 - 2:30 p.m., and by appointment

Description:

Current research in the intellectual history of moral thought in the Middle Ages has allowed concepts of sin and virtue to emerge from a narrowly theological inquiry and to be seen, individually and in series, in the same light as other historically defined objects of study central to the Humanistic endeavor. In this way, current research does not define categories of sins merely as theological entities, but rather as differentiated articulations of what were socially accepted forms of desire. In late-medieval England, the cultural construction of sin became part of and contributed to changing political, social, devotional, ecclesiological, and literary patterns. In assessing what it meant to sin in this period, we must take into account a wide range of changing conceptions: of loyalty and knighthood, of the power of the peasantry to compete with the middle and upper levels of society, of private and lay forms of worship, of penitential theology, of the ways reform orthodoxy might legitimately subsume heretical critiques of the Church, and of literature’s goals in the private and public spheres. We will read documents written to define, regulate, and/or reflect personally on the place of sin in the life of the English clergy and laity. Most of these texts will be in Middle English, but some (with translations) will be in French or Latin.

Texts:

• Newhauser, Richard. The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular. Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 68. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1993. [isbn 2-503-36068-8].

• Book for a Simple and Devout Woman. A Late Middle English Adaptation of Peraldus's Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus and Friar Laurent's Somme le Roi, edited from British Library Mss Harley 6571 and Additional 30944. Ed. F. N. M. Diekstra. Mediaevalia Groningana, 24. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998. [ASU: BJ 1240.D54 1998]
• The Book of Vices and Virtues. Ed. W. Nelson Francis. EETS os 217. London etc.: Oxford University Press, 1942; reprint 1968. [ASU: PR 1119.A2 no. 217 1942]
• Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Parson's Tale. In The Riverside Chaucer. 3^rd ed. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Pp. 287-327, 956-65, 1134-35. [ASU: PR 1851.B46 1987]
• Gower, John. Mirour de l'omme. Trans. William Burton Wilson. Rev. Nancy Wilson Van Baak. East Lansing: Colleagues, 1992. [pdf]
• Gower, John. Vox clamantis. Trans. Eric William Stockton. In The Major Latin Works of John Gower. The Voice of One Crying, and The Tripartite Chronicle. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962. [ASU: PA 8520.G74 1962]
• Guillaume de Digulleville (Deguileville), The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode, ed. A. Henry, 2 vols., EETS OS 288 and 292 (London, 1985-88). [ASU: PR 1119.A2 no. 288 1985, PR1119.A2 no. 292 1988]
• Langland, William. The Vision of Piers Plowman, Ed. A. V. C. Schmidt. London: J. M. Dent, 1978; reprint 1997. [ASU: PR 2010.S3 1978]
• The Macro Plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind. Ed. Marck Eccles. EETS os 262. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. [ASU: PR 1119.A2 no. 262 1969]
• Mannyng, Robert. Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne. A.D. 1303. With those Parts of the Anglo-French Treatise on which it was Founded, William of Wadington's Manuel des Pechiez. Re-ed. Frederick J. Furnivall. 2 vols. EETS os 119, 123. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1901-1903; reprint as one vol. Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1978. [available free at http://www.archive.org/details/p1robertofbrunne00mannuoft]
• Peter of Limoges. The Moral Treatise on the Eye. Trans. Richard Newhauser. Mediaeval Sources in Translation, 51. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012. [ASU: QP 475.P4813 2012]
• Peter Lombard. The Sentences. Trans. Giulio Silano. 4 vols. Mediaeval Sources in Translation, 42-43, 45, 48. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007-2010. [pdf]
• Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. Thomas P. Riche, Jr., and C. Patrick O’Donnell, Jr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. [ASU: PR 2358.A3R6 1978]
• Wyclif, John. Trialogus. Trans. Stephen Lahey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [pdf]

• Bejczy, István Pieter. The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 202. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2011. [ASU: BV 4645.B45 2011]
• Bossy, John. “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments.” In Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Edmund Leites. Cambridge And New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. 214-34. [ASU: BJ 301.C63 1988]
• Garrison, Jennifer. “Mediated Piety: Eucharistic Theology and Lay Devotion in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne.” Speculum 85 (2010): 894-922. [ASU: PN 661.S6; online resource]
• Kamath, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs. “Naming the Pilgrim: Authorship and Allegory in Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlegrinage de la vie humaine.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010): 179-213. [pdf]
• Kendall, Elliot. Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. [ASU: e-book]
• McLaughlin, R. Emmet. “Truth, Tradition and History: The Historiography of High/Late Medieval and Early Modern Penance.” In A New History of Penance. Ed. Abigail Firey. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 14. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. Pp. 19-71. [ASU: e-book]
• Miller, Mark. “Displaced Souls, Idle Talk, Spectacular Scenes: Handlyng Synne and the Perspective of Agency.” Speculum 71.3 (1996): 606-32. [JSTOR]
• Newhauser, Richard. “Preaching the ‘Contrary Virtues.’” Mediaeval Studies 70 (2008), 135-62. [ASU: D 111.M44]
• Newhauser, Richard. “‘These Seaven Devils’: The Capital Vices on the Way to Modernity.” In Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins. Ed. R. G. Newhauser and S. J. Ridyard. York: York Medieval Press, 2012. Pp. 157-88. [ASU: BV 4626.S56 2012]
• Patterson, Lee W. “The ‘Parson’s Tale’ and the Quitting of the ‘Canterbury Tales.’” Traditio 34 (1978): 331-80. [JSTOR]
• Rice, Nicole R. Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 73. Cambridge: Cambrisge University Press, 2008. [ASU: e-book]
• Scanlon, Larry. “Personification and Penance.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 21 (2008): 1-29. [pdf]
• Wenzel, Siegfried. “Preaching the Seven Deadly Sins.” In In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages. Ed. Richard Newhauser. Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 18. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press, 2005. Pp. 145-69. [ASU: BV 4626.I57 2005]
• Wenzel, Siegfried. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research.” Speculum 43 (1968): 1-22. [ASU: PN 661.S6; online resource]

Requirements:

An oral report on the topic you have chosen to work on in consultation with me and a final paper (not to exceed 35 pages).

1/9 Introduction: What is sin? Why does sin matter?

1/16 Monastic Sins: Guillaume de Digulleville (Deguileville), The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode, Book 2; Newhauser, Treatise, chapters 1-2

1/23 Monastic Sins: Guillaume de Digulleville (Deguileville), The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode, Book 3; Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath, “Naming the Pilgrim”

1/30 Sins at Court: John Gower, Mirour de l'omme, vv. 21781-24180, pp. 291-316; John Gower, Vox clamantis, Book V, chapters 1-8, pp. 196-208; Elliot Kendall, Lordship and Literature, chapter 3

2/6 University Sins: Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 2, distinctions 42-44 (vol. 2, pp. 207-17); John Wyclif, Trialogus, Book 3; Wenzel, “Some Problems”

2/13 Sin for Preachers: Peter of Limoges, The Moral Treatise on the Eye, chapter 8; Wenzel, “Preaching the Seven Deadly Sins”

2/20 No class

2/27 Sin and Lay Instruction: Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, vv. 2989-8582 (pp. 105-270); Jennifer Garrison, “Mediated Piety”

3/6 Sin and Lay Instruction: Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, vv. 2989-8582 (pp. 105-270); Mark Miller, “Displaced Souls”

(Spring Break)

3/20 Sin and Lay Instruction: The Book of Vices and Virtues, pp. 1-68; Newhauser, Treatise, chapters 3-6

3/27 Contrary Virtues: The Castle of Perseverance; Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues, chapter 4; Newhauser, “Preaching the ‘Contrary Virtues’”

4/3 Sin and Devotion: Book for a Simple and Devout Woman; Nicole Rice, Lay Piety, pp. 1-16

4/10 Allegorical Sins: William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, B.5.1-642; B.14.202-61 (ed. Schmidt, pp. 62-94, 370-73, 424-31; 238-41, 394, 464-65); Larry Scanlon, “Personification and Penance”

4/17 Sin and Penance: Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale; R. Emmet McLaughlin, “Truth, Tradition and History”; Lee Patterson, “The ‘Parson’s Tale’”

4/24 (Dis)continuities: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1.iv.1-51 (ed. Roche, Jr., pp. 79-91; John Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic”; Richard Newhauser, “‘These Seaven Devils’”

Final Papers are due by noon on Wednesday, May 1.