Learning Outcomes:
– Explain different theoretical approaches to subjectivity and identity formation, including those specifically formulated for the medieval period under consideration.
– Apply such theoretical approaches to explain how music contributes to processes of subject and identity formation.
– Evaluate how medieval musicians used music to negotiate their identity and their place within the societal norms and cultural discourses of their time.
– Using theories of subjectivity, interrogate an individual piece of medieval literature, a manuscript, an institution, or a community to analyse how music was used within it to shape identity.
– Compare the medieval interactions between music and identity studied in the course with such interactions in the present day.
Indicative Module Content:
Week 7: Introduction to Theories of Identity and to Thirteenth-Century Song
(Weeks 8 & 9: Two weeks of study period)
Week 10: The Emergence of the Self: Introduction to theories of subjectivity via troubadour and trouvère song.
Week 11: The Emergence of the Other: Defining yourself against others in troubadour and trouvère song.
Week 12: Literary Selves: Musical identity creation in medieval literature.
Week 13: Performed Material Selves: Making a self-consciously artificial artistic persona through manuscripts.
Week 14: The Communal Self: Making a group identity through music.