Love Stories: Desire & Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (I)

Our modern conceptions of desire, self, body and gender are informed in complex and often invisible ways by earlier narratives of love. We will investigate the conflicting accounts of love written during the medieval and early modern periods, considering in particular the relationship between the idealized notion of "courtly love" and the darker, medical picture of love as a form of madness or melancholia. Reading a variety of works including lyric, drama, romance and medical texts, we will look at the construction of gender and sexuality, the relationship between desire and subjectivity, and the gendering of certain "diseases" of love (such as hysteria) during this period. Authors to be studied will include: Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, and a selection of male and female lyric poets. 3 hrs. lect./disc.