ENGL 238 - Middle English Literature

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2015/16a:  Arthurian Literature in Medieval Britain. In 1191, the Glastonbury monks purportedly found the remains of King Arthur and Guenevere. They proceeded to publish their discovery and invited “reliable” witnesses (in the figure of Gerald of Wales) to come and experience the exhumation. The Glastonbury monks could funnel this find into a potentially large money-making venture for the monastery as the future site of an Arthurian pilgrimage. For the Norman royal house, this meant that they could use this find to squash any potential and future Welsh rebellion. Gerald of Wales writes up his account of this momentous exhumation and this is one of the many pieces of Arthurian literature that we will be looking at in this class. This class considers how Arthurian material becomes part of the political and religious rhetoric used to secure a sense of what constitutes medieval Britain and who should control it.

This class examines the beginnings and rapid spread of Arthurian materials from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. We move from historiography and chronicle to romance and lai, in both prose and verse. We begin in the twelfth century and finish at the end of the fifteenth century with the Winchester Malory and Caxton’s printed version of Malory’s work. We read materials from Latin, Middle Welsh, Anglo-Norman French, Middle Scots, and Middle English texts. Some of the texts we examine: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Brittaniae; La3amon’s Brut; Marie de France’s Lanval; Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, Perceval, Lancelot; Cullhwch and Olwen; The Dream of Rhonabwy; the Welsh Peredur and Ywain; the Welsh Triads; Of Arthour and Merlin, The Stanzaic Morte Arthure; The Alliterative Morte Arthure; Prose Tristan; The Awntyrs of Arther; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristem; and Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.  Ms. Kim.