The Heart in Literature, Philosophy, and Science Studies (class notes)
of a course designed and taught by Michael Ursell

Also see: notes of class on Encountering Antiquity.

Summary of The Heart in Literature, Philosophy, and Science Studies class:

Day 1; Day 2; Day 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10.

Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; Day 15; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20.

Day 1

Week 1 - Opening the Heart

• Introductions.
• Myths about the Heart

Day 2

• Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".
• Gail Godwin's Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life: Part 1, Chapters I-V.

Day 3

Week 2 - The Heart in Antiquity

• Plato's Timaeus.
• Aristotle's Historia Animalium and De Patribus Animalium (selections)

Day 4

• Galen's On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body (selections)
• Gail Godwin's Heart: A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life: Part 1, Chapters X-XIII.

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Descartes' Discourse on Method continued: Part V.
• Blaise Pascal's Pensées (selections).

Day 18

• Group viewing of the film Untamed Heart.

Day 19

• 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.

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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