Module description
This module studies medieval narratives of journeys in, to and from Britain. These journeys of conquest and conversion, pilgrimage, vision and quest allow examination of the relation between humans and their natural and built environments. Issues considered will include national identity and borders; the localisation of the sacred; memory places; performance and ritual; the projection of the self onto landscape; the agencies of place. Its places include taverns, cathedrals, castles, cities, forests and Fairyland: some of them are still here. A core of literary texts is supplemented by visual and historical material.
Assessment details
Translation exercise (10%), Final essay (90%)
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practical skills appropriate to a Level 6 module and in particular will be able to:1. Develop an understanding of various modern and medieval concepts of place and time.2. Articulate relationships between medieval material and more recent ideas; apply theoretical concepts to close readings of texts and images.3. Consider the interrelation of literature, visual arts, material culture and embodied practice.4. Identify key areas of interest within the material studied, and present critically supported interpretations of the material, in oral discussions and in written essays.
Teaching pattern
One lecture and one seminar weekly
Suggested reading list
Core reading
Please buy these books:
Gerald of Wales, History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John J. O’Meara (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982)
The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: OUP, 2008) or The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005)
The Works of the Gawain-Poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. Ad Putter and Myra Stokes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2014)
Other primary texts will be included in a coursepack.
Please get Gerald of Wales in advance as we read it in week 2.
Preliminary critical reading:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006)
John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis, eds, A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004)
Christopher Cannon, The Grounds of English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
—, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)
Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001)
Kathy Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature and English Community 1000-1534 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964)
Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Ben Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998)
Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveller (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989)
Gillian Rudd, Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
Lynn Staley, The Island Garden: England’s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)
Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)
David Wallace, Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)