Mattison, Julia
TR 3 :55 PM
Park Hall 0145
This course traces ideas about war in the Middle Ages and ideas medieval war that evolved in later periods by reading the stories of King Arthur. Beginning with the orgins of the King Arthur legend in Welsh, Latin, and French texts (read in translation), this course examines war both is and is not a feature of Arthurian literature. The course asks how stories about king from the distant past might have held meaning for medieval society. Discussions of King Arthur stories will focus on how descriptions of war create ideas about nation, society, and gender. This course extends beyond medieval literature to study adaptations from the sixteenth through twenty-first centuries. These later adaptations bring different elements of King Arthur into focus, revealing different ideas of medieval warfare that reflect on later time periods. Almost all works in the course are read in modern English translation.
topics: history, empire, translation, gender, chivalry, nationalism, race, colonialism
Readings (including, but not limited to):
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britian
Wace, Roman de Brut
Layamon, Brut
Béroul, Tristan
The Alliterative Morte Arthur
Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
W.H. Ireland, Vortigern: A Historical Tragedy in Five Acts
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising
Nicola Griffith, Spear
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Excalibur (1981)
King Arthur (2004)
Merlin (2008-)