“The Saga of Egill, Viking Skald and Psychopath: Tradition and Text”
October 3, 2007
A lecture by Professor Michael Chesnutt (The Arnamagnæan Institute, University of
Copenhagen) cosponsored by CMRS and the Department of Scandinavian. View pictures >>
“Medieval Manuscripts—Their Makers and Users: A Conference in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse”
October 5 - October 7, 2007
The UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, with the assistance of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Huntington Library, and the Young Research Library at UCLA, announces a three-day conference to honor the careers and scholarship of Richard and Mary Rouse. Sessions will be held at each of the participating institutions: on Friday, October 5 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, on Saturday, October 6 at UCLA, and on Sunday, October 7 at the Huntington Library. Lectures at the conference will reflect the remarkable range and impact of the Rouses’ work: paleography, codicology, manuscript production and decoration, the transmission of the classical tradition, and the formation of libraries. Among those libraries, medieval to modern, the conference celebrates the gift of the Rouses’ own manuscript collection to the Department of Special Collections at UCLA. A PDF version of the complete program (159kb) can be viewed online at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/programs/rouse_conf_program.pdf.
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CMRS Faculty Roundtable, “Chaucer and Numerical Design: A Case of Increasing Commitment”
October 10, 2007
Professor Edward Condren (English, UCLA) discusses “Chaucer and Numerical Design: A Case of Increasing Commitment.” Although Chaucer has long been thought a "self-educated" man, thoroughly familiar with many of the learned texts of his day, there is no evidence of his formal education in the higher learning. Close scrutiny of his early dream visions suggests, however, that he had been experimenting with quadrivial mathematics. In Book of the Duchess the Golden Proportion privileges an informal compositional style over the formulaic one Chaucer inherited from his French precursors, and Parliament of Fowls lays before us the whole of proportional mathematics to affirm what Cicero presents in the Dream of Scipio which Fowls summarizes, the relation among all created things. The Troilus and Criseyde, a poem of the 1380s that Chaucer perhaps considered his greatest single work, gives pointed attention to a mathematical paradox as the most important interpretive guide to the poem's meaning. Thereafter, in his remaining career during the 1390s, while collecting earlier works and composing new ones for the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer seems to have reduced the mathematical content of his designs to mere spatial construction, arrangements that could be noticed by any attentive reader, for example, those at a Wednesday afternoon brown-bag lunch.
CMRS Open House
October 15, 2007
The Center invites faculty and students with an interest in Medieval and Renaissance Studies to attend an
open house marking the beginning of the new academic year. Meet the Center’s staff and learn about
CMRS programs, awards, and fellowships. View pictures >>
CMRS DVS Lecture, “Spices and the Medieval Idea of the Exotic”
October 17, 2007
Spices were wildly popular in medieval Europe, especially as trade increased and tastes for luxury products imported from Asia developed. Medieval cuisine was perfumed with the flavor of spices, but things such as pepper, ginger, musk, and ambergris were also used as medicines and perfumes. The vogue for spices was encouraged by the image of Asia as exotic, mysterious, wealthy, and even sacred. This lecture by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Paul Freedman (Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University) will discuss how the allure of the East enhanced the demand for spices and the European hunger to find out where they came from. View pictures >>
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Disputation: Greek Roots”
October 18, 2007
With Professors David Blank (Classics, UCLA), Catherine Atherton (Classics, UCLA), and Sean Kelsey (Classics, UCLA). The sophist wants to win by an art of speaking, the philosopher wants to find truth by an art of questioning. This is a philosopher’s version, at any rate, of the ancient struggle between philosophy and rhetoric, recorded by Plato in the Gorgias, the dialogue in which Socrates confronts the famous sophist of that name. Already in antiquity, both kinds of discourse, rhetorical and philosophical, were governed by rules that became formal and elaborate and then shaped the later development of disputation. View video >>
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Qu’ranic Roots: Jadal and Disputation in Islam”
October 22, 2007
With Professors Tony Street (Divinity, Cambridge), and Hossein Ziai (NELC, UCLA). Public disputation played a central role in natural theology (kalam) and jurisprudence (fiqh) in the Islamic world. The verb jadala (to dispute or argue) is common in the Qu’ran, and various derivatives of the verb have been used to cover a range of disputational forms, from the structure of Aristotle’s Topics to Al-Jazeera’s presentation of the news. A long tradition of works called Kitab al-Jadal emerged not only within the philosophical tradition (an early work by al-Farabi, for example) but also within the legal tradition (a text by al-Hanafi, for instance). Many of these Arabic works give rules for public disputation. A Latin treatise On the Way of Opposing and Responding that purports to be a translation of a Kitab al-Jadal is probably a thirteenth century forgery, but the forgery itself indicates the prestige of the Arabic disputational tradition in Latin Christendom. View video >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable
October 23, 2007
Professor Mortimer Chambers (History, UCLA) discusses Lorenzo Valla's Latin translation of Thucydides. The first translation of the Greek text of Thucydides, into Latin, was the work of the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla from 1448 to 1452. Various scholars published their own editions of Valla's Latin text, but in doing so they changed his words many times. This talk concerns the history of Valla's text, which will soon be published in a photographic facsimile by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with an introduction by Professor Chambers. View pictures >>
CMRS DVS Lecture, “Interrogating an Erotic Picture: Beneath the Surface of the Concert Champêtre”
October 29, 2007
Professor Jaynie Anderson (Herald Chair of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne) will investigate the critical reception of the Concert Champêtre, a painting which has been attributed to Giorgione and Titian. Some new evidence from the recent scientific analysis of the under drawing by means of infrared analysis will be brought to bear on the problem. View pictures >>
“Thrice-Born Latinity”
November 2 - November 3, 2007
After a first birth before the age of the Roman Kings, the Latin language has enjoyed many rebirths: one in the Carolingian era, another in the High Middle Ages, and a third in the Renaissance. In our own time, two extraordinary scholarly enterprises have renewed the vigor of Latinity: the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (CTC) and the I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRL), the first led by Professor Virginia Brown of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, the second by Professor James Hankins of Harvard University. With the generous support of the Cassamarca Foundation, the UCLA Department of Italian and CMRS present a conference to discuss and celebrate the work of Professors Brown and Hankins. The program explores the implications for humanist scholarship of the CTC, the ITRL, and the texts and authors illuminated by them. Guest speakers will include Professor Christopher Celenza (Johns Hopkins University), Professor Frank Coulson (Ohio State University), Professor Anthony D’Elia (Queens College, Kingston), Professor Charles Fantazzi (East Carolina University), Julia Gaisser (Bryn Mawr), Craig Kallendorf (Texas A&M), David Marsh (Rutgers University), Dr. Diana Robin (The Newberry Library), Professor Shane Butler (UCLA), and Professor Fabio Troncarelli (University of Tuscia, Viterbo). At the end of the conference, Professors Brown and Hankins will reflect on the presentations and discussions. A conference presented by CMRS and the UCLA Department of Italian, made possible by the generous support of the Cassamarca Foundation. Organized by Professors Brian Copenhaver, Massimo Ciavolella, and Michael Allen. Full program available in PDF format (1246 kb). View pictures >>
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Biblical Roots: Talmud, Disputation and the Torah”
November 6, 2007
Speakers to include Professors Bill Schniedewind (NELC, UCLA), Howard Wettstein (Philosophy, UCR), Eliott Dorff (American Jewish University). Reasoned debate was the core of Talmudic methodology, the Rabbinic method par excellence of discerning the Bible’s real meanings. The early Rabbis thought of the written Torah recorded by Moses as less extensive than the oral Torah known to the prophets and handed down to themselves. Debate over the oral Torah and its relation to the Bible was also summarized in the written Mishna and later Talmudic texts. Disputes about these texts and the oral traditions behind them generated great heat, but it was heat in the service of light. Strikingly, the Talmud says of divergent, even contradictory, teachings that ‘these and also these others are the words of the Living God,’ a principle that guided the early Rabbis as they developed methods of analyzing God’s words while holding sacred their own disputes about the meanings of those words. View video >>
California Medieval History Seminar
November 10, 2007
The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to have read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. The California Medieval History Seminar is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the CMRS, the Huntington Library, and the Caltech Huntington Committee for the Humanities.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Gilbert Crispin: The Disputation of a Jew with a Christian”
November 13, 2007
Speakers to include ProfessorsHoward Wettstein (Philosophy, UCR), and Steven Kruger (CUNY). The Abbott of Westminster after 1085 was Gilbert Crispin, a follower of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. Before 1100, Gilbert wrote The Disputation of a Jew with a Christian About the Christian Faith, an early survivor from a series of literary versions of debates about religion between Christians and Jews – debates in which Jews were often forced to participate. Gilbert presents his text as the record of a real event or events, and he describes the Jew’s arguments as ‘consequent and logical.’ ‘He explained with equal consequence his former objections,’ Gilbert writes, ‘while our reply met his objections foot to foot.’ Gilbert adds that the disputation led to the conversion of another ‘of the Jews who were then in London, with the help of God’s mercy.’ View video >>
CMRS Roundtable, “The Sea of Stories: Framed Narratives and Medieval Mediterranean Poetics”
November 14, 2007
Prof. Karla Mallette (Humanities Institute, UCR) will present her current research on framed narratives in Arabic, Latin, Spanish and Italian. Her presentation will focus on two broad themes: using contemporary scholarship on Mediterranean studies to map the narrative collections and trace their Mediterranean itineraries; and re-evaluating the “Arabic thesis” in light of the transmission of narratives between Arabic and Romance literary traditions in the Mediterranean. View pictures >>
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Ancient Church Councils: How formal were they, and was there discussion?”
November 20, 2007
Guest speaker Thomas Graumann (University of Cambridge). In the ancient church, the meeting of bishops in synods or councils became an increasingly frequent occurrence. Often fundamental theological topics were on the agenda, in particular questions about the Trinity and Christology. One expects these to be the object of intense discussion. However, it is not straightforward to assess how bishops debated the issues in hand, or whether they “discussed” them at all. Of the earliest councils only indirect news and patchy documentation survives, from which evidence of discussion has to be extrapolated. Of later and better-documented councils, in particular the so-called “ecumenical” councils, extensive records are extant. Yet these appear to have little interest to reveal openly what discussions took place. They require scrupulous analysis to uncover how substantive theological debate was conducted, and which other factors influenced decisions. To understand such purported debates, it is further necessary to inquire into analogies and possible models for conciliar formats and conduct of business and to consider social conventions. View video >>
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Disputing Love: Abelard, Heloise and Bernard of Clairvaux”
November 27, 2007
With Constant Mews (Monash University). Abelard, in 1115 the most celebrated logician of his day, fell in love with a brilliant and beautiful young student named Heloise. Their story of tragic love, starting with bad judgment, causing Abelard to be castrated, and ending in conventual solitude, was all the more dramatic because they were passionate debaters about despair, salvation and personal obligation in and out of wedlock. A current of disputation runs not only through the late letters that they exchanged after events tore them apart but also through an anonymous exchange of letters (preserved at the abbey of Clairvaux) that, it is argued, they wrote during the affair. The seminar will consider disputation about love as a consistent theme of their relationship from its earliest phases, comparing what they both had to say about love, with the reflections on the subject of Abelard’s famous adversary, Bernard of Clairvaux, whom Heloise once welcomed to the Paraclete. View video >>
CMRS Co-sponsored Lecture: “Archipelagic Macbeth”
November 28, 2007
CMRS and the UCLA Department of English co-sponsor a lecture by Professor John Kerrigan (University of Cambridge). Over the last few years , Dr. Kerrigan has been devolving seventeenth-century 'Eng Lit', showing how much remarkable writing was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Milton, Marvell, and Defoe were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and 'national' groups around the British-Irish archipelago. In the course of this research, he has found himself engaging with the claims recently made by historians that the great crises of the period stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was compound, multiple, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into civil wars. This lecture returns 'the Scottish play' (1605-6) to the context provided by James VI of Scotland's accession to the throne of England (plus Wales) in 1603, which brought with it sovereignty in Ireland. It shows how these matters of state are inextricable--this being Shakespeare--from the rhetorical make-up of the play, not least its neglected concentration on greeting. View pictures >>
CMRS Roundtable, “The Song of Roland and the Leges Barbarorum”
November 28, 2007 Dr. Leena Löfstedt discusses the Song of Roland. Different commentaries of the Song of Roland invoke Germanic tribal laws to explain the protagonists' behavior, but these tribal laws are neither identified nor quoted. Since several of the tribal laws (Leges Barbarorum) that could have been known by Charlemagne, and the author(s) of the Song of Roland alike, exist in modern editions, a more explicit comparison is possible. And it adds a new dimension to the Song of Roland, maybe explaining some of the minstrel's commercial success. View pictures >>
Sixteenth History of the Book Lecture, “Christine de Pizan and the Chapelet des Vertus”
November 29, 2007
The History of the Book Lecture series brings eminent scholars to UCLA to share their expertise about medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts. The sixteenth lecture in the series is presented by Mary Rouse (CMRS, UCLA) , who has co-authored five books and over sixty articles on medieval florilegia and medieval libraries, and on the production and use of manuscripts in the later Middle Ages. She is an authority on the book culture of medieval Paris and, more recently, of renaissance Paris. Her current research has focused on the history of a medieval French florilegium known as the Chapelet des Vertus “Garland of Virtue” and the use made of it by Christine de Pizan. As France’s first female essayist, Christine has become an industry in recent decades, especially with the growth of feminist studies. Her use of the Chapelet reveals a surprising and previously unrecognized aspect of Christine’s use of her sources, and demonstrates once again that the lady was, indeed, literate in Latin as well as French. The Chapelet is known in fourteen manuscripts. UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library has recently acquired one of only two manuscripts of this work now in North America (the other is at the Morgan Library). View pictures >>
