Medieval Literature.

Catalog description

The Middle Ages, depending on whom you ask, begin sometime around 500 A.D. with the fall of the Roman Empire and last until the dramatic changes of the late 15th and early 16th centuries—the discovery of the New World, the invention of printing, Humanism and (last but not least) the Reformation—swept through Western Europe. England, remote as it was from the great cultural centers of Late Antiquity, nonetheless proved a fertile ground for new ideas that took root and flowered in unexpected ways. This course offers a chronological overview of medieval English literature with an emphasis on its religious and philosophical background. By the end of this course, students will see how the great works of the English Middle Ages—Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Old English elegies and Middle English Marian lyrics—make use of Christianity’s rich linguistic, philosophical and doctrinal heritage as they enjoin their readers to the pursuit of Christian wisdom.