Department of English

“I sing of knights, of love and arms, of court chivalry, of courageous deeds,” begins Lodovico Ariosto’s famous sixteenth-century romance, the Orlando Furioso. This course will offer a broad survey of the literature of “knights, ladies, chivalry, and courageous deeds,” from the medieval tales that inspired Ariosto, to his latter-day successors: Spenser, Behn, Shakespeare, even Tolkien and George Lucas. We will approach romance as a genre that always invokes the “long ago and far away,” but also resonates deeply with concerns in the present: problem arising, for instance, from religion, commerce, and slavery. Students will be evaluated in the course based on short writing assignments, a final exam, and participation in classroom discussion.