Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced seminar in British literature. May be organized by author, genre, period, or critical approach. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

A Road Not Taken — The Gawain-Poet

Of the four “Ricardian Poets” singled out by the influential critic J. A. Burrow, the nameless Gawain-poet has made the least mark on English literary history. His work confined to a single manuscript of middling quality, the Gawain-poet attracted neither the immediate literary following of Chaucer and Gower nor the popular reception of Langland. And while The Canterbury Tales, Confessio Amantis, and Piers Plowman have been justly regarded for their public and even national engagement, the poems of the Gawain-manuscript have traditionally been viewed as the enigmatic efforts of some aloof provincial genius, insulated by distance and predilection from the social upheavals marking other late-fourteenth-century works.

In this seminar, we will focus exclusively on the poems of the Gawain-manuscript – Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – in an attempt to answer some of the vexing questions that they raise. How do these four works fit together? Are they the efforts of a single poet or a group of like-minded poets? How do they relate to the so-called “Alliterative Revival” of the later English Middle Ages? More important, we will participate in recent critical efforts to situate the poems within the very political, religious, economic, social, and dynastic movements from which they once seemed so removed. How do we reconcile these Northwest Midlands productions with the more overtly public poetry of Chaucer and his London circle? Why is Chaucer so often considered, in the words of John Dryden, “the father of English poetry” while the Gawain-poet is cast aside as its irascible and inassimilable uncle?

 

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Of studie tak ye moost cure and moost heede.
Noght o word speke ye moore than ys neede,
And that is seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence;
Sownynge in moral vertu is yowr speche,
And gladly wol ye lerne and gladly teche.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

IMPORTANT NOTE: I will not be ordering texts through the SFU Bookstore. You are responsible for obtaining the two main texts for this class. I recommend ordering them through a local independent bookstore or, alternatively, through an online retailer such as Amazon. Additional secondary readings will be made available on the class Canvas page.

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: