| Unit name | Arthurian Literature |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29021 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Putter |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None. |
| Co-requisites |
None. |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit is devoted to the Arthurian legend, as imagined and re-imagined by the major writers of the medieval and post-medieval period. Beginning with the first 'biography of King Arthur', by the twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, we move from the earliest Arthurian romances (by Chr�tien de Troyes) to Middle English adaptations and thence to Malory's vast (and most influential) Arthurian epic, The Morte Darthur. The similarly ambitious Arthurian 'cycle' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, itself based on Malory, provides us with our main focus in our exploration of post-medieval Arthuriana. We end in the modern period, with Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court - which takes Arthurian themes and characters into the modern industrial world - and with T.H White's classic of children's literature, The Sword in the Stone.
Aims:
The aim of the unit is to give students a good grounding in Arthurian literature, medieval and modern, and to develop skills in close reading and in comparative criticism.
Learning outcomes include the ability to structure and sustain an argument, the ability to understand texts written in earlier forms of the English language and from different periods and cultures, the development of good writing and presentation skills, and the pertinent use of evidence, and of related primary sources and criticism.
1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in consultation hours where desired. In a pilot e-learning development, 4 of the weekly seminars will be taught with WUN partner universities by video-seminar (or where time differences are too great, through a lecture from a partner university that has been recorded and archived online).
1. Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe (Penguin Classics)
2. Chr�tien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. W. Kibler (Penguin Classics)
3. Morte D'Arthur (Malory's Works), ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford University Press paperback).
4. The Poems of Tennyson, ed. C. Ricks (Longman paperback); or Idylls of the King, ed. J. Gray (Penguin Classics).
5. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (Penguin Classics).
