Marjorie Curry Woods
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691170800
- eISBN:
- 9780691188744
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691170800.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Saint Augustine famously “wept for Dido, who killed herself by the sword,” and many later medieval schoolboys were taught to respond in similarly emotional ways to the pain of female characters in ...
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Saint Augustine famously “wept for Dido, who killed herself by the sword,” and many later medieval schoolboys were taught to respond in similarly emotional ways to the pain of female characters in Virgil's Aeneid and other classical texts. This book takes readers into the medieval classroom, where boys identified with Dido, where teachers turned an unfinished classical poem into a bildungsroman about young Achilles, and where students not only studied but performed classical works. The book opens by examining teachers' notes and marginal commentary in manuscripts of the Aeneid and two short verse narratives: the Achilleid of Statius and the Ilias Latina, a Latin epitome of Homer's Iliad. It focuses on interlinear glosses—individual words and short phrases written above lines of text that elucidate grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, but that also indicate how students engaged with the feelings and motivations of characters. Interlinear and marginal glosses, which were the foundation of the medieval classroom study of classical literature, reveal that in learning the Aeneid, boys studied and empathized with the feelings of female characters; that the unfinished Achilleid was restructured into a complete narrative showing young Achilles mirroring his mentors, including his mother, Thetis; and that the Ilias Latina offered boys a condensed version of the Iliad focusing on the deaths of young men. Manuscript evidence even indicates how specific passages could be performed. The result provides a surprising new picture of medieval education and writes a new chapter in the reception history of classical literature.Less
Saint Augustine famously “wept for Dido, who killed herself by the sword,” and many later medieval schoolboys were taught to respond in similarly emotional ways to the pain of female characters in Virgil's Aeneid and other classical texts. This book takes readers into the medieval classroom, where boys identified with Dido, where teachers turned an unfinished classical poem into a bildungsroman about young Achilles, and where students not only studied but performed classical works. The book opens by examining teachers' notes and marginal commentary in manuscripts of the Aeneid and two short verse narratives: the Achilleid of Statius and the Ilias Latina, a Latin epitome of Homer's Iliad. It focuses on interlinear glosses—individual words and short phrases written above lines of text that elucidate grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, but that also indicate how students engaged with the feelings and motivations of characters. Interlinear and marginal glosses, which were the foundation of the medieval classroom study of classical literature, reveal that in learning the Aeneid, boys studied and empathized with the feelings of female characters; that the unfinished Achilleid was restructured into a complete narrative showing young Achilles mirroring his mentors, including his mother, Thetis; and that the Ilias Latina offered boys a condensed version of the Iliad focusing on the deaths of young men. Manuscript evidence even indicates how specific passages could be performed. The result provides a surprising new picture of medieval education and writes a new chapter in the reception history of classical literature.
Irina Metzler
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Social History
For medieval thinkers, a prominent philosophical, religious and legal problem concerned how to distinguish between the ‘will-not’ and the ‘can-not’. Amassing medieval evidence for the ...
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For medieval thinkers, a prominent philosophical, religious and legal problem concerned how to distinguish between the ‘will-not’ and the ‘can-not’. Amassing medieval evidence for the characterization these 'types', this chapter considers the tension between people regarded as not wanting to do something and people incapable of doing something despite perhaps wanting to. The 'genuine fool' was accorded preferential treatment in all these realms, but the 'pretend fool' was regarded with suspicion, and was perceived as morally dubious, even dangerous. Precisely because cognitive disability is not something writ large on the body, like a crippled limb, medieval commentators were worried by it, just as they were worried by deafness (equally invisible and also causing communication and moral issues). It is the behaviour rather than the physique that is highlighted as being different from 'the norm'. It is a sign of more modern times that physical appearance comes to be more strongly linked to cognitive disability. Medieval children appear to have been categorised by their learning ability as expressed through behaviour, not physiognomy.Less
For medieval thinkers, a prominent philosophical, religious and legal problem concerned how to distinguish between the ‘will-not’ and the ‘can-not’. Amassing medieval evidence for the characterization these 'types', this chapter considers the tension between people regarded as not wanting to do something and people incapable of doing something despite perhaps wanting to. The 'genuine fool' was accorded preferential treatment in all these realms, but the 'pretend fool' was regarded with suspicion, and was perceived as morally dubious, even dangerous. Precisely because cognitive disability is not something writ large on the body, like a crippled limb, medieval commentators were worried by it, just as they were worried by deafness (equally invisible and also causing communication and moral issues). It is the behaviour rather than the physique that is highlighted as being different from 'the norm'. It is a sign of more modern times that physical appearance comes to be more strongly linked to cognitive disability. Medieval children appear to have been categorised by their learning ability as expressed through behaviour, not physiognomy.
