Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced study of specific aspects of Medieval literature. May be defined by author, genre, or critical approach. Reserved for English honors, major, joint major and minor students. Students with credit for ENGL 404 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

King Arthur: History, Myth, Legend

Aside from a spattering of inconclusive references and a few bardic sources, the first significant reference to King Arthur occurs in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 1136 History of the Kings of Britain. Presented in Geoffrey’s work as a sixth-century Briton warrior king who both resisted Saxon incursions and expanded (temporarily) the scope of British power even to the gates of Rome, Arthur’s origins exist in a hazy past; however his development as both a historical figure and a romance hero throughout the Middle Ages allowed him quickly to emerge as a powerful but always-fraught symbol of national identity. Even after the medieval period, Arthur’s myth has persisted, remaining in common circulation from the Renaissance through to the modern period and shifting through a variety of complex literary, religious, colonial, and psychological discourses on both sides of the Atlantic. If twenty-first-century film and television adaptations such as the BBC Series Merlin (2008-2012) and the forthcoming film Knights of the Roundtable (2017) indicate, Arthur remains a potent figure even today.  

This course will consider the figure of King Arthur and the changing shape of his legendarium as it develops from its origins to the close of the Middle Ages. As we consider texts ranging from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s vexing Historia, to the Welsh Mabinogian, to the brilliant alliterative romances of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Alliterative Morte Arthure, to the apotheosis of the Arthur legend in Sir Thomas Malory’s encyclopedic Morte Darthur, we will consider not only how the works are informed by their specific cultural and historical contexts but also how the figure of Arthur himself, as well as the shifting cohort of knights that surround him, have worked to instantiate cultural and historical traditions themselves. Warrior king, courtly gallant, traumatized survivor, psychological puzzle—Arthur finally becomes a cipher, a quasi-historical figure used alternately to legitimize and to subvert shifting constructions of selfhood and nationhood throughout the middle ages, constructions that still resonate to this day.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: