At a Kalamazoo ICMS roundtable titled “Teaching Violence and Trauma in the Premodern Classroom (A Roundtable),” the question arose: How do we get our students to understand that the violence and horrors depicted in the literary and historical texts are not necessarily representative of the realities of the time?
I was reminded of an exercise I had done with my students when we read Lanval, focusing on the literary representation of romantic love versus the reality. I mentioned it, and (omigod!!) Tara Mendola (one of the panelists) tweeted out my idea.
#kzoo2018 #s389 you can juxtapose modern fiction against medieval to show students how neither representation mirrors real life (via .@DainyBernstein ) doesn’t have to be trauma, can be love
— t.s. mendola (@tsmendola) May 12, 2018
I had written up this lesson as a resource for the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study a while ago, so I’ve decided to post it now in this context. The lesson plan, with some notes, is below:
Lanval Lesson Plan
Pre-class: Transition from Anglo-Saxon, brief overview of Anglo-Norman language and culture, mention of term “courtly love”
Class session:
- Ten-minute writing exercise with two questions:
- “Describe “romantic love” according to medieval literature (using the text we’ve read so far, Lanval.)”
- “Describe “romantic love” according to your own (contemporary) understanding.”
- Note: I passed out half-papers with one question on each side. I did not direct the students to one question first, rather letting them decide which to answer first. Some didn’t realize there were two questions until their classmates told them to turn the paper over. I am curious what effect the order of questions has on the way students answer…
- PowerPoint: factual information about medieval marriage; explanation of the idealized system of courtly love; explanation of chivalry and its development; images from manuscripts depicting tournaments, chivalric behavior, etc.
- Group activity: class divided into three groups. Each one assigned a character (Lanval, Guinevere, fairy queen).
- Instructions: identify lines that describe their assigned character, copy out those lines, and then discuss the character.
- Full-class discussion: beginning with character analyses, moving into discussions of gender roles, loyalty, lordship, courtly love, etc.
Post-class: Blog post assignment:
Hindsight on modern romance: After we’ve read and discussed Marie de France’s Lanval in the context of courtly love and chivalry, you know now that love as portrayed in medieval literature often does not resemble the realities of medieval love. Choose a contemporary genre of literature or film (romance, Young Adult, erotica, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thriller), and think about how love and romance are portrayed in that genre. Imagine you’re a student of literature or film in the year 2500, studying the literature of the 21st century. What conclusions would you draw about love and romance based on the genre you’ve chosen to analyze? How does this match up with what you (the real you) know about love and romance in contemporary real life? (There’s no need to be personal, but you may use personal details.) 250-500 words.
Dainy Bernstein 