SPAN 6960 - [Voice to Noise, Medieval and Early Modern Soundscapes]

Spring. Not offered: 2023-2024. Next offered: 2024-2025. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

S. Pinet.

This will be an experimental seminar that will reach out to different sorts of supports and complements to medieval and early modern romance literary texts,such as architecture and stained glass, maps and textiles, to survey how soundscapes were perceived and instrumentalized in verbal form in there periods. The seminar will consider theoretical and critical materials alongside primary texts, and the main topics will include soundscape, ear, voice, listening, echo, secrets, silence, noise, and spaces, while each session will nuance and make connections between these main nodes. Among the primary texts included will be selections from the Bible, Augustine’s Confessions, the Chanson de Roland, Razon de amor, Libro de Apolonio, Berceo, Lazarillo, and theoretical/critical texts in addition to Schaefer, Truax, Kelman, etc., may include Kay, Silverman, Cavarero, Burnett, Kelman, Cohen, Kim, Ong, Zumthor.