Week 3--Geoffrey Chaucer, dream visions: the two kinds of "courtship," erotic and political / love, death & dream psychology

Tue. 2/6: Read Chaucer's The Boke of the Duchess, ll. 1-709.  (Note: this hyperlink goes to a general introduction to the poem.)  For a free, online version of the poem at the Online Medieval & Classical Library (Douglas B. Killings and Roy Tennant), click here.  _________________________

Th. 2/8: Read Chaucer's The Boke of the Duchess, ll. 710-1334.  (Note: this hyperlink goes to a passage-specific set of discussion issues that might be helpful when writing a mid-semester paper about BoD.)  ___Cameron Howard_________

Week 4-- Marie de France, Breton lais and their Middle English adaptations  Click here for some notes toward a structuralist analysis of the Middle English Breton lais.  Note that Laskaya and Salisbury's edition, The Middle English Breton Lais, is available online, but I strongly urge you to read the print version.  If your budget is too restricted to pay even $15 for a used paperback, please consider printing the online version so that you can take notes on the texts.

Tue. 2/14: Read Marie de France, Lais of Marie de France: "Le Fresne," (pp. 61-67 in the Busby and Burgess edition) and the Middle English "Lay Le Freine,"  Online Introduction to "Lay Le Freine"; Online Text of "Lay Le Freine" in Middle English], Marie de France, "Lanval" (pp. 61-7 & 73-81, in the Busby and Burgess edition) and Thomas Chestre's Middle English: "Sir Launfal"  [Online Introduction to "Sir Launfal"; Online Text of "Sir Launfal"]  (Note: Thomas Chestre is one of the few named Middle English poets composing Breton lais, but we know almost nothing else about him other than that he also is named as the author of the romance, Lybeaus Desconus or "The Fair Unknown.")  ____Nadiera Young___  ___________________________

Th. 2/16: "Sir Degare," and  "Emare," (a paper text of these "non-Marie" lais is available in Rumble, 81-177).   [Online Introduction to "Sir Degare"; Online Text of "Sir Degare"   Online introduction to "Emare"; Online Text of "Emare".

___Bianca Duec__________  ____________________________

Week 5--Middle English English Breton Lais with No Link to Marie.  / the "Gawain" romances  Click here for some analytical strategies for writing about folk-art literature in the lais, and the Gawain-romances, vs. the self-conscious, "high-art" literature of Chaucer and the Pearl-Poet.

Tue. 2/21: Breton lais in Middle English: read "Sir Orfew," "Sir Gowther," and "Sir Cleges" (L&S, 15-59, 263-307, and 367-407).   [Online Introduction to "Sir Gowther"; Online Text of "Sir Gowther"; Online Introduction to "Sir Orfeo"; Online Text of Sir Orfeo"].

___Elizabeth Bellsey___________  ____Louisa K. Smith_______

Th. 2/23: "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" (852 lines) and "Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle" (500 lines).  [Note: because these readings were added to the syllabus too late for a book-order, please consult the online Introduction to "Wedding"; online text of "Wedding"; online Introduction to "Carle"; and online text of "Carle"].

___Johanna Grimm___________  _____________________________

Week 6--Alliterative verse: the Pearl-Poet--romance revisited; Christian and secular romance

Tue. 2/28: Read the Pearl-Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Fyts 1 and 2 (ll. 1-1125).  Click here for the Luminarium.org links to the Middle English text and some Modern English translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Click here for the U. Toronto text of the Middle English followed by Modern English prose translations which you can compare with Finch's.

____Hannah Verlich________  _____________________________

Th. 3/1:  Read the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Fyts 3 and 4 (ll. 1126-2530).  Click here for links to seasonal images from life on the estate of a great lord like Gawain's Welsh host.

___________________________  __Maggie McManus_____________

Week 7--Alliterative verse dream vision: the Pearl-Poet--mystical poetry and numerology; dream-visions meet mathematics.

Tue. 3/6: Introduction to the Pearl-Poet and the alliterative, rhyming dream vision, Pearl: Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse and the Middle English "Alliterative Revival"; magnates and barons vs. the king's court; Northwest Midlands dialect; numerological interpretation.  Read Pearl,  stanza groups 1 through 10 (600 lines, or is it 599 lines, because the fifth stanza in the eighth group appears to be missing a line?).

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Th. 3/8: Read Pearl, stanza groups 11 through 20 (612 lines, because the fifteenth group appears to have an extra stanza--hmmm...something funny going on here, eh?).

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Friday 3/9: Deadline for Midterm Papers, 5 PM, emailed as a properly formatted, MS-Word-readable file. 

Sat. 3/10-Sun. 3/18: Spring Break

Week 8--Manuscript construction, composition order, and Arthurian romance 

Tue. 3/20:  Read in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, "The Tale of King Arthur" ("Merlin," "Balin or the Knight with the Two Swords," "Torre and Pellinor," "The War with the Five Kings," "Arthur and Accolon," and "Gawain, Ywain, and Marhalt"). (Malory 3-110)   Note this hyperlink covers all of "Segment 1," the first continuous sequence of composition in the Winchester Manuscript (ff. 1-70) and ends where the "Roman War" narrative (which we're not reading) starts.   For a short note on how Malory was edited by Vinaver based on the Winchester MS, click here.

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Th. 3/22:  Read "A Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake," "The Tale of Gareth that was called Bewmaynes," (149-226).

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Week 9--"the matter of Britain" in Arthurian romance

Tue. 3/27: Read excerpts from the "Trystram" and "Sankgreall": "Lancelot and Elaine," "The Departure," "Lancelot," "Castle of Corbenic," and "Miracles of Galahad" (Malory 477-506, 515-524, 551-558, 593-608)

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Th. 3/29: Read  "The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" to the end of "The Healing of Sir Urry" (611-669).  We now are in a section of the text in which Malory begins to take the kinds of artistic liberties with his translation/transformation of his sources that Modern readers expect of a fiction-writer.  Click here for a short discussion of the signs of this change.

____Elizabeth Bellsey_______  _____Nancy Terry_____________

Week 10--"the matter of Britain," Malory's Morte and romance as tragedy; and "the matter of Troy," Chaucer's Troilus (Book I) and romance as comedy.  For a hyperlink to an online text of Barry Windeatt's edition of Chaucer's Troilus, click here and scroll down to "Chaucer, Geoffrey."

Week 11-- the Renaissance Chaucer; the "matter of Troy"; romance as erotic instruction (Troilus I-II) 

Tue. 4/10: Read Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Book I, lines 939-1092 and II, lines 1-826 (C almost talks herself out of and into loving T, then goes down to hear Antigone's song).  Click here to hear Susan Yager (Iowa State U.) read Book II, lines 449-504,

_____Louisa Smith_________  ____Maggie McManus________

Thurs.  4/12: Read Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Book II, lines 827-1757 (C's nightengale-inspired dream, Pandarus teaches T to write a love letter (which the narrator paraphrases), P delivers the letter to C "by force" and takes C's answering letter to T (also paraphrased, C invited to Deiphebus' house for dinner where she will meet T for the first time)

_________________________  _____Cameron Howard___________