Spring 1994
Mr. George Dameron
JANUARY 20: INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION TO COURSE
JANUARY 27: DISEASE AND HISTORY*
McNeil, introduction, chapters 1-3
Ziegler, preface, chapter 1
Zinsser, chapters 1, 4, 5
FEBRUARY 3: EUROPEAN SOCIETY BEFORE THE BLACK DEATH
Ziegler, chapter 2
Dameron, chapter 4
Gottfried, Introduction, chapters 1-2
FEBRUARY 10: EMERGENCE OF A PERSECUTING SOCIETY BEFORE TE BLACK
DEATH
Moore, entire
sources: Wakefield and Evans, 53 and 54
**FIRST ESSAY DUE ON READING FOR FEBRUARY 10**
FEBRUARY 17: THE COURSE OF THE PLAGUE IN ASIA AND EUROPE
Ziegler, chapter 3-12
McNeill, chapter 4
Sources: Boccaccio, Decameron, preface
FEBRUARY 24: FAMILY, WOMEN, AND PRIVATE LIFE
De la Ronciere, entire
Herlihy, Medieval Households, chapters 5, 6, conclusion
MARCH 2: **PROSPECTUS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE**
MARCH 3: BEHAVIOR AND SEXUALITY
Huizinga, "The Image of Death," in Waning of the Middle Ages
Brundage, chapter 10
sources: Boccaccio, Decameron, 1.1, 1.3, 10.6, 10.10
MARCH 10: SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
Ziegler, chapters 13-16
Duby, 287-331
Sources: Duby, 520-544
MARCH 17: PEASANT REVOLTS: THE ENGLISH PEASANTS' REVOLT OF 1381
(A CASE STUDY)
Hilton, entire
sources: Dobson, part 1, documents 2-7; part 6 (52-55)
SPRING RECESS (MARCH 21-25)
MARCH 31: RELIGION, PIETY, AND ANTISEMITISM
Ziegler, chapter 17
Cohn, chapters 1 and 2
Langmuir, chapters 3, 10, 13
Sources: Chaucer, "The Prioress's Tale"
APRIL 7: THE VISUAL ARTS
Meiss, entire
Cohn, chapter 7
Polzer (article in The Black Death, ed. Williman)
Slide presentation
APRIL 14, 21 ORAL PRESENTATIONS ON RESEARCH PROJECTS
APRIL 28: CONCLUSION: DISEASE AND MODERN SOCIETY
Albert Camus, The Plague (entire)
Film: "The Seventh Seal" (date and time tba)
A current article on AIDS (to be announced)
**FINAL ESSAY DUE**
MAY 4: RESEARCH PAPER DUE
Week 1
1. How does Boccaccio describe the Black Death in Florence?
2. What does the document from Buxeaul reveal about the economic effects of depopulation on this particular village?
3. What is the history of the modern varieties of the flu?
Week 2
1. What is disease?
2. What is the relationship between parasitism, evolution, and the
environment?
3. What are disease pools?
Week 3
1. What was the economic and social setting in Europe in the early fourteenth century?
2. Why was the population in 1348 "ill equipped to resist the plague"?
3. What were the three types of plague and how were they diffused throughout society?
Week 4
1. What were the original sources of popular hatred against heretics, Jews, and lepers?
2. How did persecution help consolidate the power of the elite?
3. What does Moore mean when he writes, "heretics and Jews owed their persecution in the first place not to the hatred of the people, but to the decisions of princes and prelates?"
Week 5
1. What was the origin of the plague that struck Europe, and what course did it take as it swept through the continent?
2. What impact did the Mongols have on disease balances after 1200?
3. According to Boccaccio, how did Florentines react to the plague?
Week 6
1. What role did women play in Florentine households in the early fifteenth century?
2. To what social milieus did the individual belong?
3. What were the living and housing conditions in which the different classes lived?
Week 7
1. What examples does Huizinga give to demonstrate that Europeans were fixated on death and dying?
2. Why did civil governments become more actively involved in dealing with sexual issues after the Black Death?
3. Why did prostitution flourish after 1348?
Week 9
1. Did the Black Death cause the Revolt of 1381?
2. Did the rebellion improve or set back the lot of the English peasant?
3. What were the causes of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381?
Week 10
1. What effect did the plague have on attitudes toward ecclesiastical institutions?
2. How did the plague affect the direction of piety in Cohn's study?
3. How does Langmuir interpret Chaucer's "Prioress' Tale"?
Week, 11
1. What is the thesis of Meiss' book?
2. What does Polzer have to say about art about the Black Death, and how does his interpretation differ from Meiss'?
3 What does Cohn's study reveal about art after the Black Death in Italy?
Week 12 and 13
Student presentations
Week 14
1. What are the significant themes developed in Camus' novel?
2. How does Bergman use the plague to comment on the human condition in the twentieth century?
3. What similarities and differences do you see between the social reaction to the plague in the fourteenth century and the reaction to AIDS in the twentieth?