Courses

What kinds of fantastic creatures and supernatural wonders fill the medieval imagination? What do these strange marvels say about medieval desires, fears, and beliefs? This course examines the supernatural in medieval romance, the most popular genre of the middle ages. Throughout the semester, we will investigate a wide-range of romances from early Breton lais to modern film adaptations, and we will identify the primary conventions and concerns that define the genre, such as waste lands, witches, demons, chivalry, identity, and sexual desire. We will pay particularly close attention to how fantasy works in these romances, considering what about the genre makes it particularly receptive to magic and what kinds of magical motifs recur throughout romance. We will contemplate how the supernatural works in these romances to articulate other pressing medieval concerns, such as religion, science, gender, politics, and culture. Most of our texts will be in the original Middle English, and you will achieve a proficient reading level of the language by the end of the course.