ENG 352 - Studies in Medieval Literature

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
The late-fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer is surely one of the greatest masters of irony in English literature. In this course we will study a generous selection of his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales. The first section of the course will focus on developing students’ facility with Chaucer’s language and with medieval culture through a study of the General Prologue. As we proceed through the tales, we will pay careful attention to Chaucer’s representation of gender and class through his use of irony and satire, his manipulation of genre, his relationship to his source materials and to medieval Christian authorities, and his subtle exploration of a poetics of instability. Throughout the course we will also consider and reconsider the implications of Chaucer’s ambiguous social status within the Ricardian court, as well the validity of thinking of the poet as a “skeptical fideist.” Students will learn to read Middle English fluently by the end of the semester, though no previous experience with early forms of English is required. This course applies toward the department’s pre-1700 requirement.

Dante’s Divine Comedy
In this course we will study Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century masterpiece The Divine Comedy, seeking to understand this ambitious poem both on its own merits and as an index of the major literary, artistic, and intellectual currents of European culture during the High Middle Ages. The Divine Comedy as a whole narrates Dante’s fictional journey through the afterlife, where he witnesses the eternal torments of the damned souls in hell, the patient endurance of the restless Christian spirits in purgatory, and the ineffable delights of the blessed in paradise. As we follow Dante-pilgrim on his journey, we will look specifically at the poetic and narrative strategies that Dante-poet employs in thinking through the changing relationships between language and truth in the separate canticles of the poem, thinking about how an infernal poetics, for example, differs from a paradisiacal one. In light of ongoing debates in Dante studies, we will also focus on the extent to which Dante’s poem enjoins readers to a process of conversion and on the ways in which Dante establishes his own poetic and moral authority as a counterweight to the corruptions of the fourteenth-century church. Readings will be from the English translation by Robert and Jean Hollander, with the Italian text of Dante’s poem on the facing page. This course applies toward the department’s pre-1700 requirement.

Middle English Literature
In this course, students will acquire a fluent knowledge of the Middle English language, with hands-on experience reading texts written in English from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. We will also be introduced to the relevant historical and cultural backgrounds that will open up a deeper understanding of the contours of the medieval imagination. Texts studied may include Middle English lyric poetry, The Owl and the Nightingale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, The Book of Margery Kempe, and excerpts from Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): Two ENG courses at the 200 level or higher
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 4 times for credit if different topics.
Notes:

Not all topics offered every year.
Review schedule of classes for availability.
Review specific descriptions for applicability to department requirements.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: This course applies toward the department’s pre-1700 requirement.
Dante’s Divine Comedy: This course applies toward the department’s pre-1700 requirement.
Middle English Literature: This course applies toward the department’s pre-1700 requirement.

Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).