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| HOME > Calendar & Programs > Calendar March 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Calendar
California Medieval History Seminar The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to have read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. The California Medieval History Seminar is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the CMRS, the Huntington Library, and the Caltech Huntington Committee for the Humanities.
CMRS Lecture, “Renaissance Culture and its Global Ambitions” A lecture by Professor George Huppert (University of Illinois at Chicago) that will consider the ongoing debate concerning what some have called “The Great Divergence” and others “The European Miracle.” Instead of comparing unreliable estimates of coal or steel production in eighteenth century Britain and China, Huppert shifts the debate to a much earlier time and to comparisons that have nothing to do with production or consumption statistics. Co-sponsored by the UC Riverside Department of History.
Thirtieth Annual UC Celtic Studies Conference Organized by the UCLA Celtic Colloquium and Professor Joseph Nagy (UCLA). More information is available at http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/celtic/.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Latin v. Greek at the Council of Florence” With Professor John Monfasani (SUNY, Albany). In 1439 the Council of Florence brought about a historic union of the Greek and Latin Churches. But the union quickly fell apart after the Greek delegation returned home. What went wrong? Was the union doomed from the start? Did one or both sides misconceive the enterprise? After all, in theology one cannot achieve agreement by simply splitting the difference. Download the readings in advance at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/disputation_readings/index.html#council_florence. You will need to contact CMRS for the user name and password to access the files. Call 310-825-1880 or email cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.
CMRS Roundtable, “Translating the Past: Laurent de Premierfait and the Visualization of Antiquity” Anne D. Hedeman, (Professor of Art History and Medieval Studies, University of Illinois) will discuss her current research on visual translation in early fifteenth-century Paris, using as a case study Laurent de Premierfait, an early French humanist who worked carefully with Parisian libraries and artists to produce illuminated French translations of Cicero's De senectute and De amicitia, Boccaccio's De casibus and Decameron, Livy, and to contribute to a new highly visual translation of Terence's Latin comedies.
“Lovesickness, Melancholy, and Nostalgia in Early Modern Europe” One who loves in excess, or whose love is unrequited, falls ill. The symptoms are those described by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales (“The Knight’s Tale”, vv. 503-18). As in Arcite’s case, the unhappy lover runs the risk of descending into madness, which in turn may lead to death. The melancholic can expect the same prognosis. If left untreated, the lover languishes, loses appetite, is beset by fever and finally, having fallen pray to delirium, dies. One also must be wary of nostalgia. Albrecht von Haller, writing on the topic for the Dictionnaires des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, notes: “I have come across this disease many times; thus I can speak confidently on the subject. It consists of a melancholy caused by the intense desire to see our loved ones again, and by the tedium of living among foreigners whom we love not, and who lack the affection towards us that we felt within our families.” Lovesickness, melancholy and nostalgia share many traits in common, then indeed, through the course of history these ideas have often overlapped, and this ambiguity persists today, since in everyday speech these terms are almost interchangeable. This mixing and matching should come as no surprise. Literature plays a unique role in this process of distortion and reassignment of meaning. In the case of these three ideas, in particular, men of letters have shown an indefatigable propensity to explore their boundaries, to bring their reciprocal relationships to light and, most importantly, to ponder their relevance in the creation of a work of art. Download the complete program as a PDF (1.4MB)
Tenebrae: Theme & Variations Lenten Liturgy, Inheritance, Music & Dramaturgy This year in the calendar of the Western church tradition, Holy Week occurs during Exam Week at UCLA. Please join us as we examine the early roots of the Tenebrae service and other Lenten observances, from Ash Wednesday through the Triduum. Our guest artists Vox Profundis will lead us through the contemplation of dramatic expressions of ancient ritual reinvented and reinterpreted in music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.
Annual Will & Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture Professor Anthony T. Grafton (Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University) discusses “The Rise and Fall of an Early Modern Discipline: Biblical Chronology from Kepler to Ussher.” Chronology, the discipline that reconstructs past calendars and dates past events, is now of interest to few western scholars. In the early modern period, however, it fascinated great philologists like Joseph Scaliger and great scientists like Johannes Kepler. An interdisciplinary study that involved both astronomy and philology, chronology promised to connect the narratives in the Bible with the history of the Greeks and Romans. In the course of the seventeenth century, it became clear that this promise would not be kept, and this lecture will tell the story of that dramatic failure.
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University of California, Los Angeles
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Box 951485, 302 Royce Hall Los Angeles CA 90095-1485 310-825-1880 | cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu | www.cmrs.ucla.edu
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