FRS 002C— Sec. 001 — (2 units) — CRN 92783— W 9:00-10:50 am — 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 in Penguin Books. I will provide handouts of texts on the subject matter from medieval sources. Grading: Grades will be based on an oral report (20%), a written paper (60%) and on class participation (20%).

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.