ENGL 354 - Medieval Entertainments

Institution:

Westminster College (Salt Lake City)

Subject:

English

Description:

This course focuses on the wide variety of English literature composed between roughly 600 and 1500 as a form of entertainment for churches, courts, or town squares. It explores a variety of texts that were read for both edification and pleasure in monastic settings; songs, romances, and assorted vernacular poems that were performed at court; and plays that were enacted during city festivals. While most of the texts studied in this course were written as original compositions, some were recorded after generations of oral performance. Students will investigate the meanings and permeable boundaries of orality, aurality, and literacy in medieval cultures where only a minority were "literate" as understood today. In addition to theories of literary invention, perpetuation, and reception, students will learn effective strategies for close reading of Middle English writings and research methods for learning the contexts in which they became entertainments. The course associates the canon of medieval English literature with the popular culture of the past and today. This course fulfills the Periods and Movements (pre-1800) or the Theory requirement for English majors.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.westminstercollege.edu

Phone Number:

(801) 484-7651

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Four-one-four plan

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