"Confessio Amantis" in the Undergraduate Classroom: Using Actor-Network Theory to Teach Less Text More.
- Author/Editor
- Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G.
- Title
- "Confessio Amantis" in the Undergraduate Classroom: Using Actor-Network Theory to Teach Less Text More.
- Published
- Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G. "Confessio Amantis" in the Undergraduate Classroom: Using Actor-Network Theory to Teach Less Text More." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 30.1 (2023): 45-52.
- Review
- Stoyanoff's admonition to teach fewer texts and teach them more deeply is well-taken, and he describes his experiences with teaching Gower's "Tale of Virgil's Mirror" from Book V of the "Confessio Amantis" in order to accomplish depth of analysis by using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), drawn from the sociological approach of Bruno Latour and others. The description derives from Stoyanoff's undergraduate course designed for majors, and it summarizes student discussions of the animate and inanimate actors in the tale, their networks, and their resulting collectives. Brief as it is, Stoyanoff's essay encourages slow, close reading, but the concepts and terms from ANT are not explained at length, so that instructors unfamiliar with ANT will do well to read as a companion essay his earlier, more theoretical study, "Covetousness in Book 5 of "Confessio Amantis": A Medieval Precursor to Neoliberalism," Accessus 4.2 (2018): Article 2. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2023
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Confessio Amantis