“Reading Medieval Catalan”
Mediterranean Studies Summer Skills Seminar
9—12 June 2025 • Remote
The Summer Skills Seminar, “Reading Medieval Catalan” will be held via Zoom from Monday, 9 June to Thursday, 12 June 2025 from 10am to noon and 1pm to 3pm MDT.
Course overview
The Crown of Aragon in this period was an extraordinarily vibrant one, one whose interests spread across the Mediterranean as far as Asia Minor. This energy and geographical expanse are reflected in the literary texts of the day: we encounter not just the medieval Catalan-speaking lands, but many of the lands and cultures touched by them in this period. In particular, medieval Catalan literature is framed by a series of idiosyncratic individual authors, whose works reflect the broad Mediterranean engagement of this culture.
Ramon Llull: 13th-century Mallorcan philosopher, mystic, missionizer and author of more than 250 books in Latin, Catalan and Arabic promoting the complex mechanics of his "Art of Finding Truth". He is the founder of Catalan prose writing and his influence on European thought extends well beyond the Middle Ages. Along the way, he writes what could be considered the first European vernacular Bildungsroman, Blaquerna, a sharp political allegory in beast fable form, as well as a collection of 365 elusive prose poems 'in the style of the Sufis.'
The Four Grand Chronicles: Historical works on the 13th and 14th centuries that chart the reigns of two of Catalonia-Aragon's most important kings—Jaume I and Pere III—and the account by Muntaner of the Catalan Grand Company's conquests across the Mediterranean as far as Athens and Asia Minor. The fourth chronicle, by Desclot, draws on legends and epic poetry as well as on keen observation of authentic historical detail.
Anselm Turmeda: a 14th century Mallorcan Franciscan friar who secretly travels to Tunisia and converts to Islam, becoming a translator in the customs office in the port of Tunis. Known henceforth as Abd Allah al-Tarjuman (Abdullah the Translator), he continues to write books on ostensibly Christian topics but, late in life, pens a fierce anti-Christian polemic in Arabic.
Frances Eiximenis: Along with Llull, one of the most prolific writers of the Middle Ages. Based for much of his career in Valencia, he completed only a small portion of the ambitious projects he proposed, but what remains would occupy at least 8,000 pages of modern printed text. As a moralist, a keen observer and theorist of human society, Eiximenis, a Franciscan, fills his works with exempla, snippets of popular speech and song, citations from troubadours, 'citations' made up on the spot by Eiximenis himself, and glimpses of the lives and values of all sectors of the society of his day. His surviving works offer us one of the most thorough and entertaining portraits of any medieval society anywhere.
Vicent Ferrer: A Dominican friar and evangelist extraordinaire. Ferrer attained what today would be considered rockstar status. As he travelled across western Europe, riding a donkey, thousands of people, including troupes of flagellants, attended his sermons, which could last up to six hours. But Ferrer was also engaged at the highest political and ecclesiastical circles and participated in decisions that would change the course of Iberian history.
Bernat Metge: From Barcelona, and an important notary in the Aragonese chancery, he falls from grace when his king Joan I dies suddenly. In an attempt to return to royal favor, he write his Somni (Dream) in which he encounters Joan in the afterlife and also has a chance to chat with Tiresias and Orpheus while there. His sober and elegant prose, as well as his themes, are often seen as among the first reflexes of Italian humanist culture in the Iberian Peninsula.
Ausias March: A Valencian and among the most profound poets of the European Middle Ages. He moves beyond troubadour language and conventions, or, better, repurposes them to meditate in highly personal mode on love, death and his own relationship to God. His themes and incisive diction will influence poets writing in Castilian in the following century, most notably Garcilaso de la Vega.
Tirant lo Blanc: The sprawling chivalric romance Tirant lo Blanch, written by the well-travelled and ever-irascible Valencian Johanot Martorell (and perhaps completed by Marti Joan de Galba), anthologizes not only the places of the Catalan-Aragonese world of the past two centuries, including the Byzantine and Ottoman East, Sicily, Rhodes, and North Africa. It is a rollicking, and sometimes risqué, novel, which Cervantes will later call 'the best book in the world.'
From our reading of these and other texts, students should come away with a solid grounding in the major works of medieval Catalan literature, the language they were written in, and the societies that created them.
Participants said:
• “The course was great. We were only four students, which meant that each of us had myriad opportunities to read and translate, as well as ask questions. It was well-structured, although we did not have time to get to some of the authors initially proposed in the course outline. Prof. Dagenais chose not only a good variety of readings but selections that were both challenging and fun.'“
• “Instructor was knowledgeable, clearly passionate about the material, and made sure to create a comfortable class environment for mistakes and questions.”
• “Prof. Dagenais created a zoom classroom that was welcoming and great for learning. He was patient and encouraging, using both our triumphs and failures in reading as opportunities to explain grammatical or lexical elements, or as windows into the literature and culture of the period. His deep love for the subject and the depth and breadth of his knowledge were clear and inspiring, and his enthusiasm was infectious. He also has a wry sense of humor that we all appreciated. Finally, he assembled an amazing array of texts from the authors we covered as well as others and links (including instructions on how best to use those that concerned on-line collections) and pdfs to other relevant books, articles, dictionaries, etc. for further consultation. The materials he uploaded to the drop box are extremely valuable, well beyond the actual instruction we received in class.”
Faculty
John Dagenais is Professor of Medieval Iberian Literatures and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has studied medieval Catalan literature for nearly 50 years/ He has published a pair of studies on the Catalan literary works of Anselm Turmeda/Abdallah al-Tarjuman: “Translation as the Sincerest Form of Plagiarism: Translation and Linguistic Repatriation in ‘Abd Allāh al-Tarjumān’s Disputa del ase” (2023) and “The Libre de bons amonestaments by 'Abd Allāh al-Tarjumān: A Guidebook for Old and New Christians” (2019). Other studies have focused on Ramon Llull's theory of speech as the sixth sense: "afflatus" and on his Liber de les bèsties. Additionally, he has investigaged Llull's 14th-century Parisian student Thomas le Myésier (2024) and his 18th-century student Junípero Serra (2018 and 2019). His other publications include The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the "Libro de buen amor" (Princeton, 1994), a special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "Decolonizing the Middle Ages" (2000), "The Postcolonial Laura" in MLQ (2004) and “Medieval Spanish Literature in the Twenty-First Century” for the Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (2004 and 2009). He wrote the chapter on “The Crown of Aragon” for Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418, edited by David Wallace (Oxford University Press, 2016 and 2021). He recently published the first English translation of Ramon Llull’s Doctrina pueril (Barcino;Támesis, 2019) and is currently at work on a translation of Jaume Roig's 15th-century verse Spill. In 2011, he was awarded the Josep M. Batista i Roca Prize by the Institut de Projecció Exterior de la Cultura Catalana.
Program
Monday, 9 June 2025
10am—noon & 1—3pm MT
1. Intro to the course: resources and its methodology
2. Our first texts: The life of Ramon Llull and a beast fable
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
10am—noon & 1—3pm MT
1. The World According to Ramon Llull; Love and mysticism
2. Four Great Chronicles: Jaume I, Desclot, Muntaner, Pere III
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
10am—noon & 1—3pm MT
1. Anselm Turmeda: Rules to live by; Bernat Metge: A visit to the afterworld
2. Francesc Eiximenis and Vicent Ferrer: Angels, Demons, Women, Wine
Thursday, 12 June 2025
10am—noon & 1—3pm MT
1. Tirant lo Blanc: Derring-do across Mediterranean lands (and bedrooms)
2. Jordi de Sant Jordi and Ausiàs March: Love, Death and the Birth of Catalan verse
Participants
Laurie Brand (Emerita - Political Science & International Relations and Middle East Studies, University of Southern California)
Laurie A. Brand is Professor Emerita at USC, where she held the Robert Grandford Wright Professorship of Political Science & International Relations and Middle East Studies until her retirement in 2021. She is a four-time Fulbright grantee, and the recipient of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and numerous other fellowships, the author of tens of articles, and five books on inter-Arab politics, migration, and national narratives. A former president of the Middle East Studies Association (2004), she has chaired its Committee on Academic Freedom since 2007, and she is a founding member of the board of trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar on which she has served since 2015.
Jacob Gurt (Comparative Languages and Linguistics, Earlham College)
Jacob Gurt is a 2025 graduate of Earlham College with a BA in Comparative Languages and Linguistics, focusing on Spanish and Latin. His research has included work on Jewish communities, lives, and traditions in Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. His undergraduate thesis was titled “Discourses of Convention and Resistance in Eastern Judeo-Spanish Ballads.”
Carmeliz Ramas-Fisk (Medieval Studies, Fordham University)
Carmeliz is a master’s student at Fordham University’s Medieval Studies program. Her primary research interests center around the social and cultural history of women, paying particular attention to their agency or lack of, in Occitania and Catalonia in the High Middle Ages. More broadly, she is interested in the cross-cultural exchanges within these regions and throughout the Mediterranean. Her thesis project will focus on property holdings within Montpellier and its surrounding area in the 12th century, using lay and ecclesiastic charters from the region.
Michael Sanders (Medieval History, Fordham University)
Michael Sanders received his B.A. in History and English, with a minor in Spanish, from Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. He earned his M.A. in History at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, under the direction of Dr. Larry Simon. Currently, he is completing his Ph.D. in Medieval History at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY . His dissertation, directed by Dr. Nicholas Paul, is entitled “Another Way: Iberian Routes to Jerusalem, 940–1516. ” It argues that the city of Jerusalem was far more important to Iberian political culture than is often acknowledged. Pilgrimages, crusades, and plans like the iter per Hispaniam (Spanish Way) demonstrate that the Holy Land shaped conceptions of identity, kingship, and empire across Castile-León and Aragon-Catalonia.