Department of English

From the Middle Ages to the present, stories about King Arthur, the  deeds of the knights of the Round Table, and Merlin’s mysterious prophecies have mesmerized readers and audiences. In this course, we will study nearly 1,000 years of Arthurian romance beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and ending with Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the fantasy fiction classic, The Once and Future King, as well as contemporary film and media. We will also be reading authors who repurposed Arthurian literature in order to explore gender relations (for example, Elizabeth Phelps’ critique of bourgeois domesticity); slavery (Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court); colonialism and nationalism (Wales and India), and comparative religious cultures (for example, the medieval Hebrew version of King Author). The class will meet in Special Collections, where we will have the opportunity to work with rare books and manuscripts related to our subject. Throughout the course, we will think about what the genre of romance - and medievalism more generally - means to the way we write history and the ways in which we view our collective pasts and futures. Assignments will include response papers, an oral presentation, and a research paper.