Collaborative Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the Master's Level (MDV)
The Faculty of Arts offers a collaborative program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the master's level.
This new graduate specialty is unique in Canada and provides a natural follow-up to current undergraduate programs. In addition to encouraging bilingualism and both the French and Anglo-Saxon schools of thought in Renaissance and medieval studies, the program gathers specialists from several disciplines and gives you the opportunity to examine multiculturalism in the ancient societies of the fourth to seventeenth centuries.
For more information regarding this program of study, please refer to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies website.
Research fields
- Late Antiquity to Renaissance literature, religion and philosophy
- Biblical criticism and modern topics
- History and trades of the book from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance
- Production and social use of writing
- Italy of the Renaissance
- Rhetoric and education from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Narrative and historiography from Late Antiquity to the Modern Era
- History of reading
- Manuscript culture
- Women writers
- Medieval and modern theatre
- History of institutions
Description of graduate seminars 2010-2011
Fall 2010
- MDV5100A - Medieval and Renaissance Studies Research Methods and Tools (3 cr.)
Wednesday 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
How do you read an old manuscript? How do you find your way through an archive? This course will provide some preliminary answers, introducing you to the experience of working with a range of medieval and early modern books and documents. Our point of departure will be three influential medieval works, a section from the Glossa ordinaria or Standard Gloss to the Latin Bible; the Legenda aurea or Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, a popular collection of saints’ lives and miracles; and the Chroniques of Jean Froissart. We will consider how these works were composed, copied, and annotated, how they have been and can be transcribed and edited, the challenges they present, at a material level, to modern scholars, and their shifting institutional context, from the medieval university to the renaissance library to the internet.
Classroom discussion will be based on the English translations of these three texts, but there will be ample opportunity for students to work on the Latin or French versions, according to their interests, but neither French nor Latin is required. A series of practical exercises will introduce the rudiments of paleography and codicology. The major paper will then draw on these abilities to explore a medieval or early modern source in detail.
Professor: Andrew Taylor
Winter 2011
- MDV5900A - Séminaire de recherche interdisciplinaire / Interdisciplinary research seminar (3 cr.)
Monday - 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
This bilingual seminar will focus on the practice of multidisciplinarity in the study the Medieval and Early Modern periods. In-class discussions will focus on the history of multidisciplinary approaches in Europe and North America, on the meaning of “Studies in Medievalism,” on the relevance of traditional periodization in each of the students’ discipline, and also on the reason for doing Medieval and Renaissance studies. Les participants seront appelés à lire et à discuter des travaux récents, ainsi qu’à présenter leurs recherches au groupe.
Professor: Kouky Fianu
