ENGLISH 240:  Medieval Literature

A leaf from a Book of Hours, probably from Poitiers circa 1470, recording the Little Office of the Virgin, a portion of the Mass

Spring 2012  Instructor: Arnie Sanders Office Hours (G57): TuTh 12:30-1:30 and by appt.
Department of English, Goucher College  Page last updated: 04/12/2012 01:15:16 PM

New! 4/4/12-- Because Chaucer's art extends so deeply into what New Critics cherished as "style" (vs. Malory's art, which has more to do with selection and arrangement of materials) you can profitably investigate Chaucer's careful word choice for thematic patterns of repetition and variation.  For just one of many instances, near the end of Book I, and in Books II and III, the words "nece" (ModE "niece") and "em" (ModE "uncle") appear more frequently than elsewhere in the poem, but in strikingly different patterns.  We also see, within 154 lines of each other, two unique Chaucerian usages of the legal term "borogh" (guardian, bondsman or guarantor).  These kinds of patterns are not accidental.  He is "thematizing" terms in ways that New Critics and Reader-Response critics can make use of.  The gender issues in the "nece"/"em" dyad also yield Feminist and Cultural Criticism results.  You can investigate these patterns most easily by using your own reading of the RC text aided by Gerard neCastro's Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (University of Maine, Machias).

     Literary allusion, the text's pointing from itself to another literary work, also plays an important part in Chaucer's sense of himself as an artist.  His own version of the Trojan War follows in the footsteps of Boccaccio, Virgil, and Homer, and he is not shy about making creative use of the comparison.  When his text alludes to other literary works, it takes on the thematic "colors" of the alluded-to works.  See, for instance, Book II's scene in Criseyde's "parlour" where one of her ladies reads to the others from the "siege of Thebes," known to medieval readers from the Latin Thebiad of the Roman poet, Statius, and the French Roman de Thebes, which summarized and medievalised the story of how the curse of Oedipus was passed on to his two sons, Etiocles and Polynices, who go to war with each other over who shall rule Thebes.  The fratricidal combat is recorded in Greek tragedy by Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, and by Euripides' Antigone.  A "Theban" theme runs from this point in Book II (including the name of the woman who sings to Criseyde at II.827) to the interpretation of Troilus' dream by his sister, Cassandra in Book V (ll. 1457-1519).  It's Oedipus territory, fate triumphant, human plans and wisdom in doubt, even heroism perhaps futile before the implacable unfolding of historical inevitability, and the pattern begins in a book dedicated to Cleo, muse of history, in a setting that seems totally under Criseyde's control.  This guy is GOOD.

    Presentation schedule sign-up page.  Middle English Practice Conference sign-up page.   Forms of the medieval text and levels of student commitment.  Modern and Middle English Open Vowels  Material culture study opportunity: stained glass windows

Rota Fortuna from the Codex Burana (ca. 1230)  Medieval chess in a Walters Art Museum ivory medallion

Stuck for a paper topic?  Go to the Medieval Institute International Congress web site and open the "Sessions" PDF files for each day.  Search for "Trolius" (or whatever your favorite major primary source could be identified by) and look at the titles of the talks.  Then, write the paper you imagine ought to be delivered for that title.  If you get no hits for the title, try a main character, the genre, or some other issue-related term that might kick out a hit (e.g., "Decapitation," remember some unfortunate maidens in Malory and our old pal, the Green Knight?).  Give the Kalamazoo author credit for the inspiration, but the paper will be yours.  What—this doesn’t work for you?  Send me an email telling me which of the major works we read that you feel best prepared to write about, give me some idea what you are thinking about the works.  I will reply with some possibilities for papers.

        Kalamazoo 2008 Web Pages: Varieties of Middle English Pronunciation Aids and Goals; Types of passages which easily reward comparative performance; Friar Huberd's lisp; the PrioressT "O Alma Redemptoris Mater"

        In-Class Presentation Schedule.  Click here for guidance for how to prepare the presentations.  Note that you should not try to "cover" the reading for the day.  Focus your presentation on some issue or passage of interest to you, and use the Voice Board to record performances of the passage or passages to illustrate what you find interesting. 

        Analytical Themes in English 240:  This list of issues that are likely to emerge as we read and discuss this material is intended to stimulate your thinking and to help you find points of connection for your in-class presentations.  The list is offered to help stimulate your thinking, but it is not intended to limit other kinds of inquiries you might pursue.  Applying Critical Methods from English 215 to English 240: Reading early literature challenges beginners because the strangeness of the language is compounded by the strangeness of the customs, social roles, and almost every expectation one might bring to the earlier era from our own.  Take delight in that strangeness!  Let it show you an aesthetic and cultural norm that will challenge you to think like someone from another time.

        Do you want to hear more portions of Chaucer's poems read in Real Audio format?  Click here to go to the Chaucer Metapage's audio file index, and scroll to the bottom.  There you also can find an audio excerpt of The Book of the Duchess, and two excerpts from Troilus and Criseyde, the last work we'll read this semester. 

Summary

English 240 is an intermediate level introduction to Medieval culture and Middle English literature. Our primary focus will be the reconstruction of a variety of medieval ways of thinking, the mentalité of a character, a narrator, or an author, that makes this era's literature both similar to and different from modern literature.  Because they produced the largest surviving secular body of work from the era, we will focus on the "courtly makers" of English poetry, following the general topics of love and death. In addition, we will read contemporary non-fiction materials to help students reconstruct the medieval socio-political and theological world in which that loving and dying took place. Our objectives are to understand how Medieval people actually encountered their literature and culture through period documents and historical studies, and to understand the rules followed by Medieval artists, especially their debt to and modifications of the classical traditions of Greece and Rome. We approach Middle English literature through five major genres: lyric, dream vision, romance, Breton lai, and the didactic essay.

The historical materials will provide a basis for knowing how Medieval literature drew upon and embellished the lived experience of the Middle Ages. Students are cautioned, however, to beware the tendency to read literature as a literal picture of medieval life. Even avowedly mimetic artists transform their subjects according to genre rules, and their audiences have to follow similar rules in order to perceive the mimesis or re-presentation of reality. To know the literature, we have to know both how poets' audiences actually experienced events as well as poets' rules for describing those events and the rules they expected their audiences to follow when interpreting their texts.

Student Learning Outcomes: (click on the link for an explanation of what these things mean)

1)  Students will demonstrate Middle English reading skills to experience directly the way C12-15 people experienced their world in literature and in documents they used to negotiate their lives' most important moments (e.g., didactic or romance narratives, "last wills" of the dying, ceremonies of fealty and homage for feudal relationships, marriage ceremonies, etc.).

2)  Students will learn to interpret Middle English literature with full respect for its elements of continuity with Modern culture, and for its stark differences of mentalité, social organization, and aesthetics, using the terms of art by which modern medieval studies scholars analyze and understand these texts.  Click here for descriptions of some major themes which could guide your interpretation of Middle English literature.

3)  Students will use textual evidence to reconstruct and to distinguish the world-views of medieval men and women of many "estates" and occupations, avoiding reductive generalizations about "the medieval audience" and seeking evidence of the full diversity of this era's linguistic and emerging national identities.

4)  Students will be able to analyze individual works of Middle English literature in their generic contexts (e.g., romances, lyrics, dream visions), their thematic contexts (e.g., Arthurian literature, advice and complaint literature), and their material contexts as they have survived in manuscripts and early modern printed editions.    

 "Academic Honor Code: Reference to the academic honor code is required of all course syllabi as a reminder to students.  Suggested wording includes: Reminder: All students are bound by the standards of the Academic Honor Code, found at www.goucher.edu/documents/General/AcademicHonorCode.pdf." 

          So much for what the college requires me to tell students about the Honor Code.  This policy is unfortunate, because frequent, forced repetition of important statements of values results in the diminishment of those values in the minds of the benumbed witnesses (i.e., the students).  I believe in honor as a human achievement that one can win or lose by one's actions, especially as it applies to scholarly study.  I also see some value in codifying what "honor" means.  Here is my attempt to do so.  I distinguish between accidental plagiarism, in which the author obviously intended to cite sources but carelessly cited them at the wrong place, and outright theft of intellectual property intentionally passed off as one's own.  Cases of the first type usually are opportunities to teach and learn, but they may go to the Honor Board if they happen late in the semester, after we have discussed source use and its importance to your readers.  The second type will be sent to the Honor Board without hesitation.  Students also are increasingly content to cite sources long after their prose has begun to borrow ideas from those sources.  That is technically plagiarism, too, but it has become so common that I must spend gallons of ink and hundreds of keystrokes un-teaching it.  Never make me guess whose ideas I'm reading.  Cite sources when you first depend on them.  I am more interested in knowing how well you can think than in how well your sources can think.  Let there be a bright line of fire between ideas that are originally yours and those of other writers to which you refer. 

Hit Counter hits since 1/29/08 reset.