The materials listed on this page should help you get started with the research necessary to accomplish your illumination. These pages have all been vetted for their usefulness, but if you use any of them you will need to complete an evaluation worksheet for each. This requirement also pertains to sites you locate on your own.

This material should also help you decide which passage to choose, and may provide other forms of inspiration as well. I will be looking for conceptual clarity and depth (How well have you thought through the assignment? Does your research adequately support the design of your manuscript?), as well as good design and craftsmanship. Whatever medium you choose, you must use it well (no pastels). This assignment is required for completion of this class, as are the accompanying concept statement and bibliography. Have fun with it, but take it seriously enough to do a good job. It needn't look like it was produced by a Medieval monk or nun, but it should reflect careful attention to the guidelines, and the best use of chosen materials (whether hand-drawn, computer-generated, or a combination of the two).

The text itself, remember, must be completed on the computer unless you receive advanced permission to execute it by hand. I will need to see a sample of your calligraphic skills before I approve handwritten text.

Use of any web sources (except those you obtain through one of the Library databases) requires completion of a website evaluation sheet; be sure to include these in your project folder with your bibliography.

General Sources on Manuscripts and Illumination

A page on translation from Dr. Victoria Poulakis of Northern Virginia Community College offers some insight into various versions of some of the texts we're considering. Since you will be, in a manner of speaking, "translating" the poem you choose by illuminating it, her examples might prove very helpful. Some are linked directly below. Her resources page contains further information, so it's well worth visiting even if you're not dealing with one of the works she discusses.

Misrule, Mockery, and Monstrosity in Marginal Medieval Art is a dissertation by Rima Stains on the quirky imagery we find so common in Medieval manuscripts and Romanesque/Gothic sculpture: drolleries, grotesques, gargoyles, and the like. It's posted on her blog and although long, it's illustrated with all manner of amusing images. Stains is a multi-talented, highly accomplished artist who knows her stuff.

Amy Bruce's .pdf presentation, Illuminations: A lesson in the art of Illuminated Letters might help if you are still unclear about what manuscript illumination involves.

Beowulf

Beowulf in Hypertext, edited by Dr. Anne Savage. This is the source of the text I supplied (I corrected a couple of spellings), and should be cited as I have indicated on the packet cover. The site also includes a glossary and history. If you visit no other online sources, this should be helpful enough. The section we're using is linked under "Text" and then "Modern Text" and located at the beginning of section XI. Make sure you copy only the assigned lines.

William Morris's translation of the segment, "Grendel cometh into Hart: Of the strife betwixt him and Beowulf." Even though the style is an example of Morris's quasi-Medieval rendering of language, it's fairly easy to understand, and quite lovely to read aloud.

Beowulf in Cyberspace (Beowulf on Steorarume): terrifically cool online edition of the poem.

Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable. This page from Bartleby.com provides a version of the story retold by Thomas Bulfinch.

A translation of Beowulf by Dr. David Breeden, with a note on his translation and an image of the manuscript.

Translation: What Difference Does it Make? This page is from the site mentioned above. It compares various translations of Beowulf and discusses the translation process.

Green Hamlet's pages of Resources for Studying Beowulf contain some useful information on the poem's literary importance, and on its cultural context. There's also a new addition to the page: an amusing claymation video by a fan.

A film by Sturla Gunnarson, Beowulf and Grendel (with Gerard Butler as Beowulf) is available on DVD. It's filmed on location in Iceland, with spectactular scenery. Another film that deals with the story (obliquely), is the 1999 film, The Thirteenth Warrior, with Antonio Banderas (based on Michael Crichton's novel, Eaters of the Dead). In addition, Robert Zemeckis's version (in motion-capture animation), with screenplay written by Roger Avery and Neil Gaiman is decidedly unfaithful to the text, but also available on DVD.

For design ideas, take a look at these pages on the Sutton Hoo ship burial. This excavation, which began in the '30s, provided an enormous amount of information about life in Anglo Saxon England. The British Museum site allows for magnified views of the artifacts in their collection, and there are some nifty motifs that might make lovely borders and other embellisments. The University of Chicago page gives background and links to other images of artifacts (some of the same ones, but different shots)--and the main page is also useful and includes a section on Beowulf.

SmARThistory's page on the Sutton Hoo ship burial includes a link to a good article from Current Archaeology.

Artifacts from the Sutton Hoo Burial: a page from the British Museum that focuses on the helmet, but includes thumbnails of other artifacts; enlarge the images for good clear photos of the designs.

Sutton Hoo (University of Chicago): embedded links take you to the images, but it wouldn't hurt to read the essay for background. See also the home page on Anglo-Saxon England for links to further articles on the period and its literature. The Beowulf section has a picture of an early manuscript of the text--which might give you some hints on type. This is all from James Grout's rather wonderful Encyclopedia Romana, packed with information on all things to do with the Roman Empire.

The recent (September 2009) find in Staffordshire, England, is recounted in this Guardian Online story, Anglo-Saxon gold hoard is the biggest - and could get bigger--with video and good photos. Some of the "loot" featured could well provide inspiration for an appropriate border or initial. National Geographic has some nice photographs of the collection.

The Gilgamesh Epic

Annenberg Learner's Invitation to World Literature includes some terrific resources on Gilgamesh, including a short (30-minute) video, another translation, a timeline, and several other features. I have Ludmilla Zeman's wonderful children's books, The Gilgamesh Trilogy, which you're welcome to peruse in the Library.

The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs

The Met Timeline of Art History thematic essay on Gilgamesh by Ian Spar from the Met's curatorial staff, and a list of essays on Ancient Near Eastern art.

Some images: a section of the tablet that refers to the Great Bull of Heaven; some cylinder seals with images from the story: Gilgamesh and Enkidu; Gilgamesh killing a lion (and another); Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Bull of Heaven; and a drawing of a relief depicting Gilgamesh.

Prof. Diane Thompson's Gilgamesh Study Guide --an excellent resource, with background and commentary on the poem

Storytelling, The Meaning of Life, and the Epic of Gilgamesh (Arthur Brown, on Exploring Ancient World Cultures)--this essay provides some helpful insight into the importance of this story in world history.

This page on The Jewellery of Mesopotamia might provide some motif inspiration.

Also: check out the links on Mesopotamia from my Humanities class pages (although some of the links may be out of date).

One of the best available translations of the Gilgames epic is the relatively new rendition by Stephen Mitchell. He talks about his work on Stripped Books, along with an illustrated version of the portion we're considering (the Prologue).

An Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the Gutenberg Project. The introductory material offers some good background on the story and its history.

Homer and The Odyssey

Annenberg Learner's Invitation to World Literature includes a program on The Odyssey, with an engaging thirty-minute video, a timeline, a slide-show, and several other features.

Samuel Butler's prose translation of The Odyssey is available through the Internet Classics Archive. The link is to Book IX, and the Lotus Eaters passage occurs near the beginning. This translation may help you to understand the action, but reading it as prose completely obliterates the rhythm of the poem.

In 1997, Robert Fagles (who translated the Odyssey section used in this assignment) participated in a PBS News Hour forum on the Odyssey and its meaning. The translator responded to questions about the text, and students may find it interesting to read through some of his responses (questions are linked at the bottom of the page). Fagles died in 2008, and the obituary I posted on my Owl's Farm blog, Passing Strange and Wonderful, includes some links to useful information. The Fagles entry is just below the obit for Arthur C. Clarke.

MiraCosta College (California) maintains a useful page on the Odyssey, with links to translations, study guides, and the like.

One particularly popular form of entertainment enjoyed by scholars involves seeking out the "truth" (whatever facts may exist) of Homer's stories. The most famous of these efforts was Heinrich Schliemann's quest for Troy. Odysseus Unbound: The Search For Homer's Ithaca is one of the latest entries in the game, this one trying to pinpoint the location of Odysseus's home island. An Ithaca exists off the western coast of Greece, but Robert Bittlestone offers geological and other evidence to suggest that the "real" Ithaca is actually a peninsula of the larger island to its west, Cephalonia. This may not be terribly relevant to your quest, but it does indicate the power that this story still holds well into the twenty-first century. The site also includes some background information on the poem.

The Classics department at Temple University in Philadelphia provides a good Study Guide for Homer's Odyssey, aimed at college students. In the segment on Book 9, the lotus eaters link leads to further information from ancient sources (i.e. Herodotus and Apollodorus).

The Perseus Digital Library entry under "lotus" produces a page full of sources from antiquity that mention the word. Some of these are buildings, some ceramics, and some literary. But this is a site you need to know how to use, because it's one of the most authoritative and reliable places on the web to look for information on ancient Greece and Rome.

Mythweb's Illustrated Odyssey (.pdf) is awfully cute, but for short attention spans, this outline of the story can be helpful. The paragraph on the lotus eaters appears on p. 18, right next to the drawing of the Cyclops. This site will not count as a source (it's way too superficial to be suitable for a college assignment), but it's kind of cute.

A short but helpful essay on Odysseus's adventures by Dana Siegel, when he was a grad student at MIT, maps Odysses onto Joseph Campbell's somewhat oversimplified notion of the hero journey. Still, it offers a glimpse into the narrative framework of the poem and the character of its hero.

Papyrus copy of a segment from the Odyssey, Book 9 (not the chosen passage, but you can see what the earliest copy of the text looks like). This page from the Met includes a segment from Book 20 that doesn't appear in modern versions.

Troy (another of Prof. Diane Thompson's pages, with lots of good sources for background on Homer, The Odyssey, related myth, etc.)

My old History of Art & Design I slide list on Art, Design, and Civilization Before Civilization includes visual sources for Bronze Age Mediterranean art and design, plus additional information on the side bar. My Humanities pages on the Bronze Age Aegean might also provide some useful images and sources (although I didn't teach the class this quarter, some links may duplicate those above, and some may be out of date). At the end of my introductory essay I list some books available in the Kelley Library.

For people who just have to watch a movie, forget the NBC version and pick Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou instead.

A warning: do not be tempted to use Symbol or other Greek fonts to accomplish this assignment. If you do not understand the difference between transliteration and translation by this time, you're already in trouble. Don't compound your error by trying to be cute. Unless you are fluent in ancient Greek (and I am), you're constrained by the limitations of English language and letterforms.

Dante and Inferno

Alas, the new video game, Dante's Inferno, has nothing whatsoever to do with the poem or the period and if you use it as any kind of a model for this project, you'll probably get it all wrong. Thanks to Allan Teer, by the way, for his help updating this section.

The World of Dante is a hypermedia project with good information, the Mandelbaum translation, and other resources. One of its best features is a "Citings and Sitings" page of pop-culture references to Dante. Go to "Inferno" and click on Canto 5 under "Inferno text" for the translation.

Several major universities have initiated web-based research tools for studying Dante. One of these is a perennial favorite in this class, The Digital Dante Project from Columbia University. It features comparisons of the original Italian and two translations: Longfellow's and Mandelbaum's There's even a comparison between Longfellow and Mandelbaum, so you can see how different translators treat the text. Click on Canto V in the left frame, and choose which comparison you want to bring up in the right frame.

Others: The Princeton Dante Project (all of his works; it has an audio feature). The Dartmouth Dante Project provides access to a long list of commentaries. Some of the more recent, especially by Robert Hollander, might be helpful. Choose "Inferno" under "cantica," type 5 into "canto," scroll down to Hollander on the "commentaries" menu, and you can access information on each tercet.

Danteworlds (particluarly Circle 2) is a wonderful site from UT Austin. It requires a Flash player, and includes solid information on such aspects as literary allusions (which can help you decide how to illuminate your passage), as well as a brief description of what's going on in each circle. As if that weren't enough, there's an image gallery for each circle, containing a variety of images from throughout history.

Renaissance Dante in Print from the University of Notre Dame includes Renaissance texts of Dante's works, and links to further information--including a chronology of Dante's life, and many other useful sources. Students working on the text might find the section on Dante's Hell particularly useful.

The Flash-based Dante's Inferno: A virtual tour of hell is interesting to look at but not as helpful as some of those already listed. It includes illustrations by Doré, and an interface that lets you choose circles to visit, along with quotations. It's a bit confusing in places, and the illustrations don't always match what they're linked to. Still, it can give you an idea of what has been done, and open up possibilities for doing it better (if you're a Web guy looking for a project).

Translation: What Difference Does It Make? contains valuable information on reading Dante in translation.

Project Gutenberg's copy of Canto V, with illustrations by Gustave Doré. The translation is by Rev. Henry Francis Cary, 1892.

The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies Dante section includes links to texts and translations, and other material.

The Electronic Literature Foundation (ELF) has mounted a project called The Divine Comedy, Research Edition, which offers some of what Digital Dante does (translation comparisons between Longfellow and Mandelbaum), and includes illustrations by Doré, Dali, and Botticelli.

The Bodleian Library (Oxford University) copy of a fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript, in Italian, of Inferno.

Dante's Universe (an illustration of Dante's view of the physical universe)

If you want to check into the Aeneid (Dante's model for hell, based on Virgil's Hades), see Professor Diane Thompson's marvellous page on Virgil's Aeneid from Troy to Rome (part of her Troy page, mentioned above in the Odyssey section).

In a Dark Wood: Essays on Dante's Divine Comedy (this is a Canadian site with a spiritual emphasis and some brief essays and information)

Lecture on Dante (by Ian Johnson, archived from the now-abandoned Malaspina Great Books site). This is long but very informative, especially if you're new to reading the Inferno.

Academic Earth offers a free online course on the Divine Comedy by Yale Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta. Lecture 4 covers Canto 5 of Inferno, and provides a very nice introduction to what's going on. You might also want to watch the first lecture, an introduction to Dante in context.

Although you can't use it as a true source (and I'd better not see it on your bibliography except as a supplementary source), the Wikipedia article on the Divine Comedy is a good place to start if you don't know anything. The resources list at the bottom is where you should go looking for substance, but the article provides a useful introduction.

Shakespeare and The Tempest

What I'm calling an "Invocation to Ceres" has little to do with the plot of The Tempest, so try to limit your research to the content of the poem--or at least make sure you understand Shakespeare's habit of including plays and/or masques within plays. Understanding the play itself is useful, but don't spend your research time looking for images of Miranda or Prospero or Caliban--concentrate on the figures mentioned in the poem.

Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet

Charles and Mary Lamb's story version of The Tempest, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham (1909).

Shakespeare Illustrated (19th century paintings and drawings of events in the plays)

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (MIT's electronic library of Shakespeare's plays, including a glossary, FAQs, and links to other sites) Note: this site is back online, and the plays are supposed to be accessible; however, there was some kind of catastrophic disc failure not long ago, so don't be surprised if something goes wrong.

A Tempest study guide from Britain includes a segment on the masque. Click on the link to "The masque in Act IV." Sources on this aspect of the play don't get much better.

Prospero's Dream: The Tempest and the Court Masque Inverted, by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen is a scholarly analysis of the role of masques in Shakespear in general, and more specifically in The Tempest.

Walter Crane's illustrations for The Tempest, via Project Gutenberg

Absolute Shakespeare's page on The Tempest is more like a cheat sheet and not indicative of serious research on your part, but it, like the Wikipedia article, can get you started. Not for bibliographical inclusion--go to scholarly sources for real insight.

The Shakespeare Resource Center's page on The Tempest is helpful for background. It also has information on the production of the plays, the Globe Theater, and other useful bits.

This just in: For film buffs, and especially fans of Julie Taymor, here's a post from an LA Times review blog, Culture Monster: Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' is a favorite for radical cinematic revision. Taymor's version of The Tempest re-genders Prospero (who becomes Prospera, played by Helen Mirren), so the film promises to be interesting to say the least. The review also talks about other films based on the play, including my favorite, Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (it's available in the Library, but is probably to odd for most folks' taste). Go here for some videos on YouTube; one of these is a ten-minute operatic segment of the wedding--but if you're not amused by naked people, stay away. For science fiction fans, there's always Forbidden Planet--although the masque doesn't show up in it. Lost fans may note some plot similarities with both. (Note: Taymor's version is now out on DVD.)

Remember that any web sources you use must be assessed using the criteria on the web evaluation worksheet.

last update: 02.14.12