Dr. Bankert 2credits

          Hagiography is the term given to an enormous and sprawling collection of narratives (dating from the 1st  to 14th centuries), which relate the lives and adventures of the Christian saints and martyrs. If the number of surviving manuscripts is any indication, these narratives were immensely popular, far more so than any other genre. Often dismissed as aesthetically and structurally flawed, narratively naïve, fanciful, and unreliable accounts of the social worlds out of which they arose, saints’ lives and the late-classical and medieval theology that grounds them have been of increasing interest to scholars, but are rarely taught. There is good reason to do so. Hagiography has influenced modern biography and fiction; apocryphal theological texts have shaped what we think we know about Christian history; and the narratives and theology interrogate and inform modern concerns: the relationship between spirituality and sexuality and between gender and the practice of faith; the depiction of interior psychology and spiritual landscape; the qualities and actions which conferred sanctity on an individual; the imaginative depiction and definition of evil; and the relationship between church and state, between sacred and secular. More specifically, saints’ lives navigate a slippery road between history and fiction, and their heroes and heroines mediate between the human world and the divine and infernal realms.  By its very nature, hagiography is interdisciplinary. We cannot, for example, investigate the depiction of the horrific but eroticized tortures of beautiful female virgins without engaging sociological and psychological theories that can help us align contemporary appetites for such stuff with modern reader response. Nor can we ignore the problem of genre—saints’ lives often purport to be historical accounts, but they are undeniably fictional either in part are in total. In this class we will read from among the following “subgenres” and will supplement primary texts with theological doctrine and modern criticism:

          • The “infancy gospels,” which recount Christ’s precocious behavior as a young “super” child.
          • Apocryphal accounts of the apostles’ voyages to distant lands which served as recruiting ads and as inspiration for                     missionaries whose faith was tested by harsh mission-field conditions.         
          • Highly eroticized accounts of the torture and murder of virgin-martyrs (male and female) in which the human body                     becomes a battleground between the divine and the demonic.
          • Biographies of the men and women who served the Christian faith that include cross-dressing heroines, chaste                            marriages, sexual temptation as martyrdom; wilderness battles against demon infestations, and conversions                     effected by such strange means as smell.
          • Descriptive pre-Dante tours of heaven and hell; narratives that explain away theological problems, such as the                          harrowing of hell, which solved the sticky dilemma of how to get the Old Testament patriarchs into heaven.
          • Spiritual battles between saints and legions of demons who competed for “resting places” on earth, and compelled
                    to obedience if a virgin seized them by their hair.

          Writing projects will include an introduction to one life or narrative tradition, including a detailed annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources for novice readers; a short close-reading paper; and a final paper that employs theoretical and critical approaches to a text. This course fulfilles the period requirement for the English major.

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