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May 09, 2025
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ENGL153 PO - Medieval NonsenseWhen Offered: Last offered spring 2015.
Instructor(s): J.Kirk
Credit: 1
Long before Jabberwocky and Finnegans Wake, Dante included the incomprehensible line “raphèl maí amèche zabí almi” in the Inferno. At the same time, medieval scholastics were discussing the properties of such made-up words as bufbaf and blictrix. This seminar is an inquiry into the intertwining histories of the theory and practice of nonsense from antiquity to the Middle Ages, with some detours into the modern era. To be considered: ancient philosophy of language, abracadabra-style magical incantations, gossip and blather, birdsong and other animal utterances, speaking in tongues, nonsense verse, pure language. Readings may include Aristotle, Aristophanes, Boethius, Anselm, William IX, Dante, Chaucer, the Cloud of Unknowing, Carroll, Beckett, Deleuze, Agamben, Dolar. (TH, H1, PO)
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