Fall 2003 ENGL 517 M 7-10 PM |
Professor Myra Seaman Office: 74 George St. , Room 101 Hours: M 1:30-4; W 1-2:30; & by appt Phone: 953-5760 E-mail: seamanm@cofc.edu |
Key Question 1: Visit the following sites (and any others you find intriguing as you venture to these particular locations) and investigate the facts and issues surrounding King Arthur in the Middle Ages. After you have spent a good deal of time at these sites, write a two-page summary of your observations for the class, pointing out some things you discovered, and indicating your choices for the most useful resources.
Britannia’s King Arthur page
The Arthuriana page
The Arthurian Resources page
The Camelot Project
The Arthurian Studies page of the Labyrinth website
To prepare for next week’s class discussion, read Chapter 1 (pages 1-52) of the Arthurian Handbook. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the handbook’s offerings, including the maps and chronology in the prefatory material as well as the glossary starting on page 275. Read also two articles by Geoffrey Ashe that are available online; each article is four web-pages long. The articles are “Origins of the Arthurian Legend” and “A Quest for Arthur.”
Key Question 2: King Arthur has intrigued people for centuries, yet we have precious little information about this culturally powerful figure. A consideration of the “Origins” of Arthur (as the title of the first chapter of the Arthurian Handbook makes clear) is no simple archaeological-historical pursuit of facts. Instead, what we find ourselves seeking is the “origins” of the myth of Arthur, rather than Arthur the historical man. What kinds of information and what sorts of sources of information, are available to us? What are some of the implications of relying upon such sources in our hunt for Arthur? What kinds of conclusions can we reach? What questions, in other words, are we in the end going to be able to answer, given our sources?
For next week’s class, read Arthurian Handbook Chapter II, “Early Arthurian Literature” (pages 57-133). In addition, you should read a few excerpts from a number of key early sources of information about Arthur, which are available online at the following addresses:
Annales Cambriae
Dream of Rhonabwy
Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae
Nennius’ Historia Britonnum
Key Question 3:
Consider the purposes of Gildas and Nennius in their works, based on the excerpts you read. Bearing that in mind, and the various theoretical concerns we’ve discussed in class, what do you think about the claim made in the introductory material to the excerpt from Nennius at the britannia.com Arthur page, that “Nennius was, as one modern historian writes, ‘unrestrainedly inventive.’ His work can neither be entirely trusted nor can it be dismissed, as he apparently had access to no-longer-available 5th century sources”?
For next week’s class, read the Arthur material in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (chapters 5-8), a much-read and much-maligned narrative history of England, written in Latin and covering the history of the British people up until the final conquering of them by the Saxons. Also read the article “Hoel-Hearted Loyalty and the Ironization of Arthur in Geoffrey’s Historia regum Britanniae” (e-reserve) by Carol A. N. Martin on Geoffrey’s representation of Arthur.
Key Question 4:
The britannia.com page on Geoffrey claims that the Historia Regum Britanniae’s “chief impact . . . was in changing the perceptions of the ‘civilized’ world (ie. France) about the Arthurian legend, which had previously been seen as merely the heritage of barbarians and thus unworthy of a cultured person's attention or interest.” At this point in your engagement with the written manifestation of the Arthurian legend, what is your response to this claim? I urge you to consider britannia.com’s Geoffrey material before you write your response.
For next week’s class, read the Layamon selection in your Arthurian Chronicles text. Read also Kenneth J. Tiller’s article “The truth ‘bi Arthur than kinge’: Arthur’s Role in Shaping Lawman’s Vision of History” (pdf), available on e-reserve.
Key Question 5:
Carol A.N. Martin reads Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tone through a comparison with similar passages in Wace’s Brut. Extend her analysis to Lawman’s Brut: do you find Layamon’s translation follows suit?
For next week’s class, read Marie de France’s Lais, remembering that she was writing for the Anglo-Norman court, in England, but in a French that was the language of the aristocracy in England after the Norman Conquest a century earlier.
Key Question 6: Compare the forms, apparent conventions, assumptions, purpose, and likely audience of Marie’s lais to those aspects of Geoffrey and, if you wish, Layamon.
For next week’s class, read Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart.
Key Question 7:
What kind of vision of its original aristocratic audience does Chrétien’s Lancelot offer? Consider not only the representation of the poem’s hero but also the other knights, the ladies, and the dynamics of the court and its representatives as we see them.
For our next class meeting in two weeks, read two anonymous English Arthurian romances, Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, based on Chrétien. These poems are in Middle English, which you will find more familiar if you have read Chaucer in Middle English, but if you have not, you will quickly develop a vocabulary and an understanding of the syntax; the poems are heavily glossed for your assistance. Read also Alan MacColl’s article “King Arthur and the Making of an English Britain” (e-reserve).
Key Question 8:
Ywain and Gawain is considered a relatively close translation of Chrétien’s romance Yvain, while Sir Perceval of Galles is described as bearing more marks of its English writer. Given that generalization, what do you see the writers of these two English romances as most interested in conveying to their audiences, and why? What sort of cultural work are these two writers, and the poems they translated, performing?
For our next class, read two Middle English versions of the Morte Darthur, the tragic conclusion of Arthur and his glorious Round Table.
Key Question 9:Nov 10 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, and The Wedding
The Alliterative Arthur and the Stanzaic Arthur are very different figures, produced by the unique sensibilities of the writers of these two poems. In addition to reflecting the poetic mind behind each, though, these sometimes-conflicting representations of Arthur reflect two strands of the Arthurian legend. Offer evidence to support a description of each, tying it to texts we’ve read and discussed this semester.
For next week’s class, read three significant contributions of the English later Middle Ages. The longest of these, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is available to you in an edition that provides both the original Middle English (written in a dialect whose vocabulary is a challenge to Modern English speakers) and a Modern English translation. The other two, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale and the anonymous Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, are available online. The (Middle) English of these two poems is much closer to ours, but even so the Chaucer text is offered with an interlinear translation.
Key Question 10:
What is your sense of the ways these three writers are making use of the Arthurian materials we have seen elements of in our reading thus far this semester? What do their different contributions suggest about the possibilities people in late-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries in England saw in the well-established tradition of Arthur?
For next week’s class, read Malory’s “From The Marriage of King Uther Unto King Arthur”; “The Noble Tale Betwixt King Arthur and Lucius the Emperor of Rome”; “A Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot Du Lake”; and “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney.”
Key Question 11:
Malory’s source for “The Noble Tale Betwixt King Arthur and Lucius the Emperor of Rome” is the Alliterative Morte. Consider these two versions of the story in relation to one another and offer your sense of how Malory is reworking his source material, and to what possible ends.
For next week’s class, read “The Book of Sir Tristram of Lyonesse” and “The Noble Tale of the Sangrail.”
Key Question 12:
What vision of Christianity do you see represented in “The Noble Tale of the Sangrail”? What sort of Christian knight – an image familiar from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and elsewhere – does Galahad portray? How are the Christian virtues of humility and peace reconciled with the aggressive militarism of Arthur’s time?
For next week’s class, read “The Tale of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere” and “The Death of Arthur.”
Key Question 13:
We have read other versions of both the Lancelot-Guinevere story and the tragic Morte conclusion, representatives of the stories available to Malory (who used the Stanzaic Morte for the Lancelot-Guinevere and the Morte material, though he also knew the Alliterative Morte). What sorts of choices do you see Malory making in the form of one or both of these stories? What does he emphasize, what does he neglect or present differently, and what do you conclude about his sense of what he is doing with these powerful stories?
To prepare for next week’s class, return to the readings and discussions of the semester to consider, from this point, how earlier writers like Geoffrey and Layamon now appear in relation to the later development of the tradition and its various cultural uses along the way.