FRS 002 — Sec. 001 —
(2 units) — CRN 53589 — W 3:10-5:00pm — 25 Wellman
The Origins of Romantic Love: Knights, Ladies, Sex, and Sinners
in the Middle Ages
Instructor: Winder McConnell, Department of German and Russian, College
of Letters and Science
Description: The seminar will examine the roots of romantic love
with the rise of the troubadors in the High Middle Ages (ca. 1150-1250). We will
consider what the emergence of this phenomenon meant to a highly stratified society
based on class structure and the dogma of the Church. Topics to be discussed include:
Where did romantic love begin? (Greece, Rome, North Africa?); The French troubadors
and the German Minnesänger (singers of love songs); Love and Marriage in
the High Middle Ages (they don’t “go together like a horse and carriage!”);
Amor and eros in the High Middle Ages; The Tristan and Isolde story (Gottfried’s
version of ca. 1210 and Wagner’s opera); Romantic love and a) the Church,
b) the State, c) the family, d) the individual; Romantic love and the advent of
individualism in Europe.
Format: The seminar will meet once a week for approximately two
hours. In addition, students will be required to set aside ca. two-and-a-half
hours to view a film and participate in a discussion to follow. Students will
be required to read Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, available in translation
by A. T. Hatto from Penguin Books. I will provide handouts of texts on the subject
matter from medieval sources. Grading: There will be two
papers assigned in the course, the first, consisting of three pages, for (40%),
the second consisting of four pages, for (60%) of the final grade.
About the Instructor: Professor McConnell was born in Belfast,
Ireland. His alma mater is McGill University, Montreal, where he took joint honors
in History and German. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval German Literature
from the University of Kansas. He taught at a Gymnasium (High School) in Germany,
Stanford University, and the Johns Hopkins University before coming to UC Davis
in 1978. He has published extensively in the area of Germanic heroic epic and
courtly romance, and is particularly interested in the application of Jungian
psychology to literary analysis. Professor McConnell is a recipient of the Medal
of Honor from the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. He is Chairman
of the Department of German and Russian and Director of the Medieval Studies Program.