From Arthurian romances and kingly chronicles to religious mysticism and poetic masterpieces, the contents of this course highlight the literature of the British Isles (with a focus on England) from the early eighth century to the seventeenth century, spanning almost a millennium. Our course will focus on poetry, prose, and drama, written in the many languages of medieval and Early Modern England, including Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Anglo-Norman French, and Latin (though we will be reading everything in modern English translations). We will be considering closely how these formative texts contributed to a developing concept of “English literature.” But we will also be considering closely how such a singular canon of “English literature” came out of such vast and disparate materials, investigating which factors counted (and why), and which factors were overlooked, ignored, or dismissed. We will thus repeatedly return to the problem-question posed by the very concept of “Inventing English Literature”: We will approach these texts critically, asking which elements make certain texts canonical (and why that matters), and what we can learn about ourselves and our present situation by examining texts from the distant past.
- Profesor: James Staples