Mattison, Julia
MWF 9:10 AM
Park Hall 0139
Literature and War: Knights in Shining Armor, from Lancelot to Chappell Roan
This course traces ideas about war and warriors in the Middle Ages and how those ideas have evolved in modern times. This course examines the development of ideas about knights as heroes, figures of romance, brutal warriors, and more. The course draws on literature written to instruct actual medieval knights, as well as literature that figures knights as protagonists. We will read manuals of chivalry written by men and women, biographies of knights like William Marhsall and Joan of Arc, and medieval romances that feature knights like the stories of King Arthur. The course asks how stories about kings, knights, ladies, heroes, and strangers held meaning for medieval society and what kinds of meaning they hold for us now. Discussions will focus on how descriptions of knights create ideas about nation, society, and gender. We will interrogate the relationship between knights as real warriors and the representation of knights in literature as socially acceptable members of society. This course extends beyond medieval literature to study adaptations from the sixteenth through twenty-first centuries. These later adaptations bring different elements of knighthood 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.
Texts might include:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight's Tale
Christine de Pizan, The Deeds of Arms and Chivalry
Christine de Pizan, The Tale of Jeanne D'Arc
Jean Froissart, Chroniques
The Trial of Jeanne D'Arc
Vegetius, De Re Militari
The Alliterative Morte Arthure
Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart
Marie de France, Lais
The Seventh Seal (1957)
A Knight's Tale (2001)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1979)