An undergraduate course created by Geraldine Heng.

Course description

In medieval literature, difference from the norm is often marked by skin color: a Christian knight or lady in Western Europe is conventionally “fair,” while a Muslim or “Saracen” enemy is often described as Black, and someone of mixed parentage (European-and-African, or Christian-and-Muslim) may be depicted as piebald: Black-and-white. In romances, when a “pagan” or “heathen” person converts to Christianity, his skin may change color at baptism, turning dramatically white.

Jewish communities living in medieval Europe were required by canon law, from the Fourth Lateran Council on, to publicly identify themselves by wearing a special badge that marked them off as separate and different from Christians. In England, Jews were required by law to wear the “badge of shame” from 1218 on, until their expulsion from the country. Jewish people were said to have a special stench, a particular facial physiology, and even be marked by horns and a tail, and Jewish men were said to bleed congenitally, like menstruating women. In England Jews were tagged, herded, and imprisoned disproportionately, as well as judicially executed on trumped-up charges of murdering Christian children through torture, and ritual crucifixions, to re-enact the killing of Christ.  

Literature and history thus suggest that the European Middle Ages—like other periods before and after—were intensely interested in issues that we now today identify as race-related. It is also clear that the concept of race in the medieval period is complicated by religion, as well as various economic, political, social, military, and other factors that determine questions of race in Europe from the early modern period right to our time.

This course explores the changing patterns, meanings, and uses of racializing discourses in medieval Europe from the 10th through 15th centuries, by looking at some of European medieval culture's most prominent texts, legends, and artifacts. We will look at literary romances and travel literature, chronicles and sagas, saints' legends, statuary, maps, and whatever else may be useful to us. For purposes of comparison, we will also critically consider selected texts originating before the medieval centuries, as well as texts from non-European, non-Christian cultures, as well as theoretical materials.

Course readings

• “Airs, Waters, Places,” Hippocrates
• The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America (Penguin classics in translation: you will need to buy this book)
• Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach
• The Romance of Moriaen
• The Book of the Glory of the Black Race, Al-Jahiz
• History of the Mongols, John of Plano Carpini
• Prioress's Tale and Man of Law's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer
• Hugh of Lincoln (the Anglo-Norman Ballad)
• The King of Tars
• Richard Coer de Lyone