Sample Blog Post Assignment #1

Important Update 7/26/18: The Medieval Institute recently merged the Medieval Undergraduate Research website with this one. All posts from the old site have been transferred here, and the  undergraduate content can now be found under the "Undergrad Wednesdays" category. The rest of the information in this post remains accurate and up-to-date.

In light of my recent introduction to the Medieval Undergraduate Research site as a useful pedagogical tool here, I thought it might be helpful for some instructors to see a few additional sample assignments in current use. Pasted below is the prompt I am testing out this semester in my upper division Canterbury Tales course, which, based on the drafts I’ve seen so far, is likely to produce successful results. A second sample written by Maj-Britt Frenze and designed as an extra credit project will follow soon.

I intentionally wrote the assignment below to be easily adapted for many kinds of courses. Please feel free to borrow and/or modify it for your own use. This assignment could also work for graduate courses (see my rationale on how important it is for grad students to build online, public profiles here).

Blog Post Assignment

[Note: This assignment has two due dates, one for a draft, and another for a revised version. Because students’ work will be available online for anyone to see, I want them put out their best, carefully revised work.]

Length: 750-1000 words

For this assignment, you will be writing in a digital genre for a real audience of academic and public readers. Your work will be published online at the Medieval Institute’s Medieval Undergraduate Research site (http://sites.nd.edu/medievalundergrads/).
Your topic should introduce and interpret a text (or, alternatively, a manuscript of the text) from the course calendar. Choose one that you have not yet written about and that you do not plan to write about for your final essay. This is a short piece, you want your topic to be specific, i.e.—one character in a tale, a particular setting, theme, image, etc.
The point of this assignment is to learn what can be accomplished in a particular digital genre as opposed to a traditional academic essay. The following requirements are intended to get you thinking about how to present your work effectively using a technological platform, or, rather, how to craft your ideas with a slightly different set of tools. Your blog post must, therefore:

Make a connection between the medieval text and the modern world in a way that demonstrates its relevance to the modern reader (connections to pop culture, tv, film, books, social media, news, etc., all work well). Why should your readers care about what they might see as an old, dusty, out-of-touch narrative?
Use multimedia intentionally and thoughtfully. Don’t just plop some pictures in and move on. Any pictures, videos, memes, etc., need to be on topic, integrated into the post, and add real value to the point you are making. If you use manuscript images, be sure the images are not copyrighted, or else let me know so that we can request permissions to publish them. Include photo captions when necessary to identify subject matter and/or cite the source/owner of the image.
Close read and interpret carefully chosen passages from the text.
Address a wide audience that includes your colleagues and professors, but also your family, friends, and future employees (who will care about your ability to write well!). In other words, don’t assume that your audience has previous knowledge about the text, or that they know the specialized jargon of your discipline. Do write professionally, but accessibly.
Include a Works Cited in MLA format at the end and, if relevant, consider linking to online resources in the body of the post. One advantage of digital genres is that you can insert links to other online academic resources anywhere in your post. Be sure to carefully vet those sources for quality and relevance. Libraries and museums (e.g.––The British Library, The Getty Museum) often have excellent catalogs, blogs, online galleries, and more. Many academics and universities also work on fantastic projects: online editions, facsimiles and images of manuscripts, mapping projects, blogs, etc.
Include a list of 5 tags (keywords about your posts). Blog sites are organized by categories and tags. Your post will be categorized under our course title “Canterbury Tales,” but you will decide the tags for your post. Tags are keywords that identify the subject matter of your work, such as authors, themes, time periods, etc. A user might, for instance, want to click on the “Chaucer” tag to see a listing of all the posts about Chaucer on the site.
Interlink with one or two of your classmate’s posts (in your final draft). Interlinking between posts on a blog site is one way to increase traffic and to highlight the connections between the site’s various entries. These links constitute a form of citation that is not possible in print essays, and they allow you to explore how to use this digital citation method. Thus, when you turn in your first draft, we will workshop the blog posts, and you will be required to make a connection between your work and someone else’s with a link to their post. You can simply write in brackets and bold text [link to X’s post here]. Integrate this connection as smoothly as possible into your text. It should sound like it belongs there, not like you added it because your teacher made you do it.

Some Sample Student Posts from Spring 2018

Astin Ballard, “Emily’s Modes of Expression in the ‘Knight’s Tale’-A Precursor to the #MeToo Movement”

Natalie Weber, “Teaching the Canterbury Tales in the Alt-Right Era”

Megan Kollitz, “Islamaphobic Rhetoric in Chaucer: Not Just ‘A Thing of the Past’”

Follow-up: This assignment was one of the most successful ones I've given in over ten years of teaching. Many students commented on it in their student evaluations, and students simply write better when they have the freedom to choose a topic they're interested in, make the material relevant to their lives, and work in a popular genre that appeals to them. Try it!

Karrie Fuller, Ph.D.
University of Notre Dame/St. Mary’s College

April 23, 2018

Practicality over Politics: Jean Gerson and the Dukes of Burgundy

Jean Gerson was perhaps the most influential religious figure in the fifteenth century, reaching nearly all Western Christendom through his preaching, his teaching, and especially his promulgation of his works to an eager body of readers and listeners. Modern scholars of Gerson have shown how widespread the writings of the French prelate were, reflecting a long-standing scholarly consensus that Gerson spoke, intentionally so, to the minds and hearts of the non-elites of the late medieval West. Gerson’s effectiveness as a religious communicator cannot be denied, yet such a conception strangely still understates his work’s reach and efficacy. Examining the surviving manuscripts in the ducal library of the Dukes of Burgundy, we see that Gerson’s works resonated even with those who personally despised the man.

Gerson had a complicated relationship with the Burgundian Dukes. He first made their acquaintance by helping to expel Duke Philip the Bold’s agents at the French court during the Immaculate Conception controversy in 1388. Gerson’s actions led directly to a loss of Burgundian power in France, a loss which Duke Philip spent much of the 1390s trying to recoup. Philip did not punish Gerson for his past transgressions against Burgundian interests. Instead, Gerson’s part in the Immaculate Conception controversy convinced Philip that he needed this talented theologian in his own camp. The duke offered the lucrative position of dean of St. Donatien’s in Bruges to Gerson, hoping the bountiful benefice would entice the theologian to his party. Gerson accepted the position and went to Bruges in 1399. Installing Gerson in Bruges was a coup for the Burgundians: it removed the most talented of the French theologians from the University of Paris, and it ensnared Gerson within the economic web of Duke Philip. Philip undoubtedly hoped his financial offerings would persuade Gerson to permanently abandon French interests for those of Burgundy.

London, British Library MS Harley 4379; Fol. 170v.

Gerson’s working relationship with Burgundy changed after the death of Philip the Bold in 1404. The new duke, John the Fearless, despised Gerson. Duke John lacked his father’s willingness to forgive Gerson for his actions against the Burgundians in the 1380s. Near the time of his ascendancy to dukedom, Duke John removed the Saint Donatien ecclesiastical benefice from Gerson’s possession, citing the canons’ dissatisfaction with Gerson’s methods of governing the church. Historians are unclear as to the root cause behind Duke John’s personal animus toward Gerson, suggesting that the duke viewed Gerson as a French loyalist and thus an obstacle to John’s own ambition at the French court. The tension between the two men reached its apex when Gerson personally sought a condemnation of Duke John by the Council of Constance in 1414 for the assassination of his political rival Louis d’Orleans. The council was a gathering of all the most powerful churchmen in the West, and a public condemnation would have been a devastatingly blow to Burgundian political standing in France. Gerson failed in this venture in Constance, ultimately succumbing to the Burgundian delegation at the council. Nevertheless, by 1414, Gerson’s name had become anathema in Burgundian circles, particularly at the Burgundian court.

What is especially striking is that it was at exactly this moment at the height of the Burgundian and Gersonian feud that the works of Gerson entered the Burgundian court through the patronage of the ducal family. A member of the ducal household commissioned a manuscript of Gerson’s Opus Tripartitum around the year 1410 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België MS 11133-35). The Opus was a collection of three small treatises addressing the Ten Commandments (De praeceptis Decalogi), confession (De confessione), and death (de arte moriendi). The Opus Tripartitum was a short work, meant to serve as a practical guide to laypeople and less-educated priests on proper methods for handling these weighty religious issues. The treatise was an international best-seller, gaining even more popularity with the advent of printing and becoming one of the most widely published religious works in the fifteenth century. It enjoyed sixteen printings in the fifteenth century, with versions published in Latin, Spanish, Swedish, German, and Flemish.

So, why did the Burgundian ducal family want a copy of the Opus Tripartitum, a piece crafted by one of the household’s most prominent enemies? If they solely sought thorough theological instruction on the contents of the Opus Tripartitum, there were many such other works readily available to them, such as the Guido of Monte Rochen’s Manipulus Curatorum. If the ducal family sought personal religious instruction, they had their own bevy of Parisian-trained theologians to personally oversee their religious lives. Their choice of Gerson’s Opus Tripartitum indicates that the dukes were not seeking sophisticated explanations of these weighty theological concepts. They instead wanted clear, concise instruction on how to approach issues that weighed on the mind of any conscientious Christian at the time. That the dukes of Burgundy patronized Gerson’s Opus in the early years of the fifteenth century, a period characterized by fraught relationships between the Burgundians and the French (and by extension between the Burgundians and Jean Gerson) speaks to the overwhelming efficacy of Gerson’s work.

As the fifteenth century waned, the popularity of Gerson’s writings waxed at the Burgundian court. By the death of the last Valois Duke Charles the Bold in 1476, the dukes possessed at least five manuscripts by Gerson, and most likely had more. Of the surviving ducal library housed in the Royal Library of Belgium (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België), Gerson authored the largest number of manuscripts in the dukes’ theological holdings. Despite their political rivalry with the cleric, the Dukes recognized the efficacy of Gerson’s writings, and they put political prejudice aside for their own spiritual instruction. His work was simply the best at what it did. Even his enemies would have been remiss to ignore it.

Sean Sapp
Ph.D. Candidate

Further Reading:

Bernard Guenée, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

Bernard Guenée, Un Meurtre, Une Société: L’assassinat du Duc d’Orleans 23 Novembre 1407 (Paris: Gaillimard, 1992).

E. Steenberghe, Gerson A Bruges Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 31, no. 1 (1935): 5-51.

April 19, 2018December 24, 2024

“And the eyes of them both were opened”: The Moment of Knowing in an Anglo-Saxon Bible

When Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, the Book of Genesis tells us, their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. In modern editions of the Bible, the verses are divided as follows:

6 … and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons.[1]

The pause comes after the eating of the fruit, emphasizing this act. The immediate results of the act—the opening of the eyes, the recognition of nakedness, and the couple’s decision to cover their nakedness with fig leaves—all follow in quick succession. The next verses detail the further consequences of humanity’s fall. But what if the turning point were not so much the act of choosing to disobey God and eat the fruit, but the cognitive effect of doing so, the revelatory moment when human understanding changed? Such is the interpretation created by one eleventh-century manuscript of the Old Testament in Old English.

This manuscript (Cambridge, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B.iv) was probably created around 1020-1040, and is large and heavily illustrated. It contrasts with another surviving manuscript of the Old Testament, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 509, which was likely based on the same exemplar, but which is small and unillustrated. The punctuation differs significantly throughout the two manuscripts. Laud Misc. 509 punctuates Genesis 3:6-7 as follows (the ⁊ symbol is the scribal abbreviation for “and”):

⁊ genam þa of þæs treowes wæstme. ⁊ geæt ⁊ sealde hire were. He æt þa ⁊ heora begra eagan wurdon geopenode hig oncneowon þa þæt hig nacode wæron ⁊ siwodon fic leaf ⁊ worhton him wædbrec.

[and took then of the tree’s fruit. and ate and gave (it) to her husband. He ate then and the eyes of them both were opened they knew then that they were naked and sewed fig leaves and made themselves clothing]

The passage is a bit of a run-on. Punctuation separates Eve’s act of taking the fruit from her eating it and giving it to her husband, but everything that follows does so without a pause.

Contrast this with the same passage in MS Claudius B.iv:

⁊ genam ða of ðæs treowes wæstme. ⁊ geæt. ⁊ sealde hyre were. He æt ða ⁊ heora begra eagan wurdon geopenode .·.

[and took then of the tree’s fruit. and ate. and gave (it) to her husband. He ate then. and the eyes of them both were opened .·.]

The punctuation mark .·. is the “strongest” punctuation mark in the scribe’s repertoire. Used infrequently compared to the single punctus, it represents the biggest pause. And that is the last line on the page (although there is in fact space for at least a couple more words). The reader must pause here at the moment when the eyes of the first human beings are opened, and lift their own eyes to the top of the next page. This page begins with an image: the naked Eve and Adam, Adam in the act of eating the fruit, the serpent in a tree to the left. The text resumes below it, midway through Genesis 3:7, with a large colored initial that, combined with the previous punctuation and page change, suggests that this should be considered a significant break in the text, and that something new is beginning:

Hi oncneowon ða ðæt hi nacode wæron. ⁊ sywodon him fic leaf. ⁊ worhton him wædbrec.

[They knew then that they were naked. and sewed themselves fig leaves. and made themselves clothing.]

While the image still suggests the significance of the eating of the fruit, the page layout and strong punctuation invite the reader to pause and reflect at a different point in the narrative: the time when “the eyes of them both were opened” and the knowledge of good and evil was revealed. What did the world look like, in that moment?

Cambridge, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B.iv, fols. 6 verso and 7 recto. (A twelfth-century annotator has added commentary in Latin at the bottom of the pages and within the borders of the second image.)

Emily Mahan
PhD Student, Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

Further reading:

Rebecca Barnhouse and Benjamin C. Withers, The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000.

N. Doane and William P. Stoneman, Purloined Letters: The Twelfth-Century Reception of the Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Hexateuch (British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv), Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011.

Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

[1] Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, Gen. 3:6-7.