This module will explore the generic and thematic possibilities of Middle English romances – narratives of knightly adventure, combat, quests, and love. The module will address some key themes in medieval literature through a selection of verse and prose romances, including Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Emaré, Sir Isumbras, and The Squire of Low Degree. The focus will embrace matters of identity – chivalry, gender, monstrosity – as well as marvels and the supernatural, friendship, love, ethics, and heroism. The texts will be read closely in relation to their literary, social and historical contexts.

This is a course suitable both for students who have never studied medieval literature and also for those who already have some familiarity with Middle English. The texts will be read in the original Middle English.

On completion of the module students will be expected to demonstrate a good knowledge of late Middle English, and an ability to read the set texts closely and in terms of their contemporary contexts. Students will further be expected to discuss the texts in relation to a number of key ideas such as identity, gender, the supernatural, love, and transgression. Students will be sensitive to medieval narrative practices and the horizons of the romance genre in particular, and able to demonstrate engagement with a range of critical methodologies.

There will be one lecture per week, which will provide information on context, critical perspectives, and textual interpretations; there will also be a weekly seminar, which will include detailed textual analysis and language work, as well as student-led discussion. The emphasis in the seminars will be on close reading of the Middle English texts; help will be given with reading the texts in the original.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME?

Students are expected to attend and participate in the lectures and seminars for all modules on which they are enrolled. Students with good cause to be absent should inform their module leaders, who will provide the necessary support. Students with extenuating circumstances should submit the Extenuating Circumstances Form in accordance with the School’s procedures.

The total number of hours which students are expected to devote to each 20-credit module is 200. Of these, 30 hours will be contact hours with staff (lectures and seminars); the remaining 170 hours should be spent on self-directed learning for that module (reading, preparation for seminars, research, reflection, formative writing, assessed work, exam revision).  There are also additional seminars and workshops that students are able to attend.

Whilst studying this module, students will practise and develop a number of skills, including the ability to read Middle English confidently, the cultivation of scholarly and contextualist research, the use of a range of critical methodologies, and the ability to consider a wide range of texts when producing a critical argument.  Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information, operating in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas and producing clear, informed arguments in a professional manner.

Essay (3200 words) = 100%
Approx date of assessment in May

This is an indicative content list and may change – full details will be provided in the first lecture.

Emaré

Alliterative Morte Arthure

Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (selections including The Roman War, The Tale of Gareth, Launcelot and Guenevere, and The Death of Arthur)

Sir Isumbras

The Squire of Low Degree

INDICATIVE READING AND RESOURCE LIST:

Primary Texts

A course reader (and online access) for Emaré, Sir Isumbras, and The Squire of Low Degree

Alliterative Morte Arthure, in King Arthur’s Death, ed. by Larry D. Benson, rev. by Edward E. Foster (Medieval Institute Publications, 1994)

Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. by Stephen H. A. Shepherd (Norton, 2004)

Selected Secondary Reading

Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards, eds., A Companion to Malory (Cambridge, 1996)

Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (University of Forida Press, 2003)

Geraldine Barnes, Counsel and Strategy in Middle English Romance (Woodbridge, 1993)

Catherine Batt, Remaking Arthurian Tradition (Palgrave, 2002)

Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, MA., 1976)

Karen Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory’s Morte Darthur (D. S. Brewer, 2006)

Helen Cooper, ‘Counter-Romance: Civil Strife and Father-Killing in the Prose Romances’, in The Long Fifteenth Century, ed. by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 141-62; reprinted in the back of the Norton edition of Malory

Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2004)

P.J.C. Field, Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Malory’s Prose Style (London, 1971)

Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)

Melissa Furrow, Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England (D. S. Brewer, 2009)

Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter, eds, The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance (Harlow, 2000)

Catherine LaFarge, ‘Conversation in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, Medium Aevum, 56 (1987), 225-38

Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (D. S. Brewer, 1997)

Marco Nievergelt, ed., Arthuriana: Special Issue on the Alliterative Morte Arthure, 20.2 (2010)

Raluca L. Radulescu
 and Cory James Rushton, eds, A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (D. S. Brewer, 2009)

Corinne J. Saunders, The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden (D. S. Brewer, 1993)

Corinne Saunders, Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance (D. S. Brewer, 2010)

Jeff Westover, ‘Arthur’s End: The King’s Emasculation in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Chaucer Review 32 (1998), 310-24

K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu, Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes (D. S. Brewer, 2005)