ENMD 8559: Medieval Narrative

The medieval period is a great age of storytelling, at every level from apparently simple oral tales to complex and sophisticated written narratives by poets such as Chaucer and Chrétien. This new course will explore some of this range through a variety of approaches including: narrative style and structure; narrative as retelling and the development of first-person narration; narrators and their absence; point of view and perspective in texts and pictures; time in narrative; the told and the untold; stories and moral teaching. Texts to be studied will include lais by Marie de France, Chrétien’s Knight with the Lion (Yvain), King Horn, The Awntyrs of Arthure, Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Troilus and Criseyde and Physician’s Tale, the Gawain-poet’s Cleanness and Saint Erkenwald, and Malory’s Morte Darthur. There will be some reading in current narrative theory, and what we learn about medieval narrative will often be relevant to narrative in more recent periods.

Requirements: an oral presentation, two papers, a final exam.

This is a one-off course: it won’t be repeated.