English 112: The Invention of Middle English Literature

Monday 10-11; Wednesday 10-11, Sever Hall 107

Instructor:

Professor James Simpson

jsimpson@fas.harvard.edu

Barker 270

Office hours: Monday 2-4; Wednesday 2-3

Teaching Fellow:

Ms Christine Lee

Christine Lee <csalee@fas.harvard.edu>

G24 Boylston

Three hours per week (two lectures, one section)

Course Outline

This course is consistently focussed on a set of key Middle English texts that establish extraordinarily wide freedoms for writing and reading in the period 1330-1400. This critical period of writing establishes, indeed, the very possibility of writing literature (itself a challenged category), in what had been regarded as an unworthy medium, the English language.

After an introductory lecture on medieval conceptions of authorship, the course turns first to a simple but profound romance narratives (lecture 2), before looking to a much more subtle example of romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lectures 3-4). From these anonymous texts, we then turn to the variety of ways in which the writer, the private reader, and concepts of literary history are invented in a wide range of texts focussing on erotic love by Chaucer (dream poems, Troilus and Criseyde) (lectures 5-15). The rest of the term’s reading is devoted to the entirely different set of challenges faced by reformist religious writers in English. We look to two outstanding but entirely different responses to these challenges, Langland’s Piers Plowman (lectures 16-19), and Julian of Norwich’s Showings (lectures 20-23). The first of these imagines a reformed Church led by a virtuous ploughman, while the second is an exceptionally rich set of visions by Julian, the first known woman writer in Middle English.

Each of the powerful texts in this course creates ethically challenging, politically daring and innovative relationships between text, reader and writer. Each contributes to the grounds of an entirely new set of literary traditions in English writing.

No prior reading knowledge of Middle English or of these particular texts is required, though you will be expected to read those Middle English texts whose language is easier for Modern English readers in the original Middle English. Editions are, however, liberally glossed, giving ready access to the text. Bibliographies of secondary reading will be distributed each week.

Course Organisation

Required Texts

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer, third edition, general ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987)

Langland, William. William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, A Critical Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, second edition (London: Dent, 1995)

Julian of Norwich, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, ed. by Georgia R. Crampton (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. trans. Marie Boroff, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, seventh edition, vol. 1A: The Middle Ages (New York: Norton, 2000)

Sir Degaré will be provided in the sourcebook.

Lectures: These will provide a structured presentation of the topic, with each lecture offering a key idea, information about the context of relevant texts, and an argument to test.

Sections: Weekly hour-long discussion sections (starting from Week 2) will focus on texts discussed in lectures that week. Attendance and participation are mandatory. Beginning in Week 3 one short paper (200-300 words), reflecting aspects of the week’s work, will be required of each student. Extensions will not be granted without an official excuse. Each student should come to each session prepared to share the idea of the short paper verbally.

Reading: Most of the texts are either relatively short, or will be presented in readable sections. No preliminary reading will be required for the first three introductory lectures. Thereafter reading of primary texts will be required for all lectures and section meetings, with suggestions for further secondary work suggested at lectures. The reading for each week’s lectures should be completed during the previous week. Each week’s reading will amount to between 40 and 50 pages. A further reading list of relevant secondary texts is supplied below.

Requirements:

(i) Attendance at lectures and informed participation in discussion sections (10%)

(ii) weekly section papers (10%)

(iii) One 1,500-word mid-term paper, due at the end of week 5 (15%)

(iv) One-hour mid-term examination in week 7 (10%)

(v) One 2,000-word final paper, due Wednesday 11 January 2006 (25%)

(vi) One final examination (30%)

Syllabus

Week 1, 19 September

Lecture 1: Introduction: Medieval Authorship

Lecture 2: Middle English Romance: Sir Degaré

Week 2, 26 September

Lecture 3: Middle English Romance: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1

Lecture 4: Middle English Romance: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2

Week 3, 3 October

Lecture 5: Chaucer, Book of the Duchess, 1

Lecture 6: Chaucer, Book of the Duchess, 2

Week 4, 10 October

Lecture 7: Holiday

Lecture 8: Chaucer, House of Fame, 1

Week 5, 17 October

Lecture 9: Chaucer, House of Fame, 2

Lecture 10: Chaucer, Parlement of Foules

Week 6, 24 October

Lecture 11: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 1

Lecture 12: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 2

Week 7, 31 October

Lecture 13: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 3

Lecture 14: Mid-Term Exam

Week 8, 7 November

Lecture 15: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 4

Lecture 16: Chaucer, Legend of Good Women

Week 9, 14 November

Lecture 17: Langland, Piers Plowman, 1

Lecture 18: Langland, Piers Plowman, 2

Week 10, 21 November

Lecture 19: Langland, Piers Plowman, 3

Lecture 20: Langland, Piers Plowman, 4

Week 11, 28 November

Lecture 21: Julian of Norwich, Showings, 1

Lecture 22: Julian of Norwich, Showings, 2

Week 12, 5 December

Lecture 23: Julian of Norwich, Showings, 3

Lecture 24: Julian of Norwich, Showings, 4

Further reading

General Bibliography

Language

Introduction to The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) (sketch of grammar)

Dictionaries

(both available on line in Harvard Libraries Electronic Resources)

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Middle English Dictionary (MED) (see under ‘Middle English Compendium’)

Authorship

Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge (Burnt Mill: Longman, 1988), pp. 197-211

A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship (London, 1984)

Romance

James Simpson, ‘‘Violence, Narrative and Proper Name: Sir Degaré, ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney’, and the Anglo-Norman Folie Tristan d'Oxford,’” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 122-41

James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) (Chapter 6, “The Comic”)

Chaucer

A. J. Minnis, The Shorter Poems, Oxford Guides to Chaucer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) (this is the best guide, with lots of further reading)

A.C. Spearing, Medieval Dream Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), relevant chapters

Chaucer's Troilus, Essays in Criticism, edited by S. Barney (Hamden, Conn., 1980)

Critical Essays on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and his Major Early Poems, edited by C. David Benson (Milton Keynes, 1991)

Langland

John A. Alford, ed., A Companion to Piers Plowman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), esp. articles by Alford, Baldwin, Adams, Yunck.

James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London: Longman, 1990)

Julian of Norwich

Denise N. Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: from Vision to Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)

Christina von Nolcken, 'Julian of Norwich', in Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 97-108.

Nicholas Watson, 'The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992), 79-100

General Surveys

J. A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work: Middle English Literature and its Background 1100-1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)

Derek Pearsall, Old and Middle English Poetry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977)

James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

A. C. Spearing, From Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Wallace, David, ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Historical Context

Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988)

R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 ( London, 1970)

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973)

D. W. Robertson, Chaucer’s London (New York and London, 1968)

David Starkey, ‘The Age of the Household’, in The Later Middle Ages, edited by Stephen Medcalf (London, 1981), 225-90.

Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979)

Online resources

(a) Visual Sites

Web Gallery of Art: excellent archive of medieval and renaissance images: http://www.wga.hu/

Medieval Imaginations (University of Cambridge): good for images that link with scenes in medieval plays:

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/mi-sampler/index.htm

Medieval Illuminated manuscripts (National Library of the Netherlands): rich store of medieval images, thematically filed:

http://www.kb.nl/kb/manuscripts/index.html

Medieval Wall Painting in the English Paris Church: excellent for English church wall paintings:

http://www.paintedchurch.org/

(b) Verbal Sites

Widener sites for Medieval Studies:

http://hcl.harvard.edu/widener/services/research/medieval/emedieval.html

Harvard Chaucer site: very rich for texts and criticism; see also pronunciation guide:

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/

Middle English Dictionary and Corpus of texts:

http://ets.umdl.umich.edu.ezp2.harvard.edu/m/mec/ (available through Harvard portal)

Oxford English Dictionary (indispensable resource):

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezp2.harvard.edu/entrance.dtl (available through Harvard portal)

Literature Online site: rich store of texts and bibliography:

http://lion.chadwyck.com.ezp1.harvard.edu/ (available through Harvard portal)

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