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.
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
History of Jewelry | Origins of Jewelery Design might
provide some motif inspiration; scroll down to the Mesopotamian section
(there are also sections on the Egyptians and the Greeks, among others).
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.
My Myth,
Mythology, and Mythography course schedule and resource
links provide some additional places to look for information on the
story and its context. And don't forget to look at Week 2's slide
list on Art,
Design, and Civilization Before Civilization for Mesopotamian
art, and check out the related information on the side bar.
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.)
Week 2's 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.
[This page is
no longer available, but I hope it will return, so I'm leaving the
citation here.] 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).
Through
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.)
For resources
on the history and process of manuscript illumination, see
the sidebar for the week 6 image list, Manuscript
illumination, printing, and book design: the origins of the graphic
arts.
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