The Heart in Literature, Philosophy, and Science Studies (class notes)
of a course designed and taught by Michael Ursell
Summary of The Heart in Literature, Philosophy, and Science Studies class:
Day 1
Week 1 - Opening the Heart
- Introductions.
- Myths about the Heart
Day 2
Day 3
Week 2 - The Heart in Antiquity
- Plato's Timaeus.
- Aristotle's Historia Animalium and De Patribus Animalium (selections)
Day 4
Week 3 - The Movement of Medieval Hearts
Day 5
- Averroes's "The Book of Fevers" (Translation to English of an Arabic Mediaeval translation of Galen).
- Peter Pormann's "Medical Theory" from Medieval Islamic Medicine.
Day 6
- Arnaut Daniel's "Lo ferm voler q'el cor m'intra" (and other selections)
- "Le Chastelain de Couci" (selections)
- The "vida" of Guilhem de Cabestaing
- Gail Godwin's
Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life:
Part 1, Chapter XIV.
- Simon Gaunt's "The Deadly Secrets of the Heart: the Chastelaine de Vergy and the Castelain de Couci"
from Love and Death in Medieval French and Occitan Courtly Literature.
- And a presentation from a Heart Patient — a young man who had heart two operations,
having been born with a hole in his heart
(between left and right ventricles) and with three other heart problems.
Day 7
Week 4 - The Heart Wounded by Love.
- Boccaccio's Decameron 4.1 and 4.9.
- Metzke's "The Legend of the Eaten Heart".
Day 8
- Dante's Vita Nuova.
- Petrarch's Canzoniere (selections).
Day 9
Week 5 - Renaissance Lyrics: More Broken Hearts.
- Dante's Vita Nuova [continued].
- Petrarch's Canzoniere (selections) [continued].
- Maurice Scève's Sonnet Sequence Emblems of Desire: The Délie.
Day 10
- Maurice Scève's Sonnet Sequence Emblems of Desire: The Délie [continued].
- Philip Sidney's Sonnet Sequence Astrophel and Stella (selections).
Day 11
Week 6 - The De-Sanctifying the Heart.
- Samuel Daniel's Delia.
- William Shakespeare: Sonnets (selections).
Day 12
- John Ford's Revenge Play: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (about 1633,
in the reign of Charles I (1625 to his beheading in 1649)).
- William Slights' The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare:
Chapter 3, "The Organ of Affection and Motion, Truth and Conflict".
Day 13
Week 7 - Theaters of the Visceral Heart.
- John Ford's Revenge Play: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (about 1633,
in the reign of Charles I (1625 to his beheading in 1649)).
- William Slights in the Dalhousie Review:
"My Heart upon my Sleeve: Early Modern Interiority, Anatomy and Villainy".
Day 14
- Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (selected woodcuts), Epitome, "Concerning the Heart".
- William Harvey's On the Motion of the Heart, "Dedication to King Charles I".
- Erikson. "Writing the Heart from Plato to Hobbes" from The Language of the Heart.
- Godwin: Part 1, Chapter XV.
Day 15
Week 8 - The Heart as Circulating Machine.
- Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica "Of the Heart".
- John Donne's "The Blossome".
- Margaret Cavendish's "On the Motion of the Blood".
- Jonathan Sawday's "The Transparent Man and the King's Heart".
Day 16
- Descartes' Discourse on Method: Part V.
Day 17
Week 9 - The Heart Set Against Reason.
- Descartes' Discourse on Method continued: Part V.
- Blaise Pascal's Pensées (selections).
Day 18
- Group viewing of the film Untamed Heart.
Day 19
Week 10 - Matters of the Heart.
- Discuss the film Untamed Heart.
- Roland Barthes' "Heart" (one-page, in the reader): Fragments of a Lovers' Discourse.
- Discuss the last selection from Gail Godwin's
Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life:
(Part 3, Chapters I-IV).
- Two supplemental poems: "Ode Upon Dr. Harvey" and "The Flaming Heart".
Day 20
- Review and Concluding Remarks
- Final Projects Due June 10
Godwin's Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life
Gail Godwin's
Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life
gives an easy entrance to concepts of the heart through millennia and the continents,
and a quick pop assimilation of her impression of how the heart has been perceived in different
times and culture.
However, it was very unacademic, containing:
- No bibliography.
- No index.
- Chatty informality and cliché (e.g. " the poor moon goddess was burned to a crisp" [p. 74].
- Frequent personal anecdotes.
In the end, I [JZ] mistrusted it, feeling that it was too informal and lightweight.
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Ideas for, structure, and contents of the course
Copyright
© 2009-2016 by Michael Ursell.
Notes
Copyright
© 2009-2016 by J. Zimmerman,
taken in a UCSC class The Heart in Literature, Philosophy, and Science Studies
designed and taught by
Michael Ursell.
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