Second and third year undergraduate courses (Half units)

Medieval Monsters: Foreigners and Other Oddities in the Medieval Imagination

What did medieval writers think about the existence of Australia? Why did they draw maps populated with monsters? Why was it sometimes acceptable to eat your enemy, and what should the medieval women do if she has a baby that looks like a bear? Did Marco Polo really go to China? And do rhinoceroses lick their prey? How can you define humanity, and how do these questions correspond to political and religious geography? These are some of the problems that this course will wrestle with. We will study the development of a European identity in the middle ages, and the way that identity was constructed in opposition to a variety of 'others', internal and external. We will explore the relations between western Christian Europe and outsiders including Vikings, Magyars, Arabs and Turks, as well as mythical outsiders, using a variety of historical and fictional sources, including visual materials. You will be encouraged to visit Galleries and museums in London as an important contribution to your research.

Online discussions will encourage students to engage throughout the course with a variety of source materials, and will enable them to make contributions based on museum and gallery visits. This aspect of the assessment thus aims to develop independent study and research. Exchange of ideas and questions amongst students will encourage team working. The formal essay will contribute to development of written communication and the formal organisation of academic analysis.

Learning outcomes

LEVEL 2

• Ability to evaluate and understand a range of medieval source materials.
  
  
• Understanding of the development of national and regional identities, and of the growth of nationalisms in medieval Europe.
  
  
• Understanding of a range of different theoretical approaches to evidence, building on the experience of ‘Concepts and Methods’ first year course.
  
  
• Ability to produce reasoned historical arguments in oral and written form.
  
  
• Research, planning and project management skills.

LEVEL 3

• Level three students will be expected to demonstrate appreciation of a wider range of source material and a significantly more sophisticated level of analysis in their work.

Preliminary reading list

The Travels of Marco Pol,o trans and ed. by Ronald Latham, Penguin Books, 1982, c1958

The Travels of John Mandeville, trans. C W R D Mosely, rev. ed., Penguin 2005

Hay, Denys, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, Edinburgh UP, 1968

Bartlett, Robert, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350, Penguin Book, 1994

Albrecht Classen, Meeting Foreign in the Middle Ages, Routledge 2002

R I Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, Blackwell, 1987, 2nd ed. 2007

Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers 1050-1550, ed. Rosamund Allen, Manchester UP, 2004

Peter Jackson, 'Christians, Barbarians and Monsters: The European Discovery of the World

Beyond Islam' in P Linehan and J Nelson eds. The Medieval World, Routledge 2001, pp. 93-110