English 216 Medieval Literature Thursdays 1600-1845 Fall 2011 Professor Nancy P. Stork Office Hours: M 1230-1330, R 1400-1600 and by appointment 924-4477 Faculty Offices Building 218 nancypstork@gmail.com This class is an introductory seminar in the major texts of medieval Englishliterature. It assumes no prior knowledge of Old or Middle English and is designed to behelpful for your Master's Comprehensive Examination. We will be reading dual- language editions of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in order to gain as much exposure to the intricacies of Old and Middle English as is possible withoutspending a year on the language itself. Attention will be paid to reading andunderstanding some basic grammatical features of these earlier stages of the language. We will look at the texts in their historical context. Our final two classes will consist of brief presentations of your final paper topics. Though these will last no more than 10 minutes, they should be of the quality of a paperpresented at an academic conference, i.e. with attention to textual evidence andprevious scholarship supporting your thesis. Grading: Old English word study! 20% Middle English word study! 20% Malory, Prose Analysis! 20% Final Paper! 40% Texts: Chickering, ed. Beowulf (or the on-line edition by Benjamin Slade) Winny, ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Shepherd, ed.,Norton critical edition of Le Morte Darthur Chaucer texts in Middle English (librarius is fine on-line) or any standardscholarly edition (Baugh, Fisher, Riverside, Norton Critical) Schedule of Readings: August 25 Introduction to Beowulf Sept 1! Beowulf lines 1-1250 Sept 8! Beowulf lines 1251-2199 Sept 15 Beowulf lines 2200-end Sept 22 SGGK Fitt One Old English word study DUE Sept 29 SGGK Fitt Two Oct 6! SGGK Fitt Three Oct 13! SGGK Fitt Four Oct 20! Chaucer Nun's Priest's Tale Oct 27! Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Tale ! Tam Lin (tam-lin.org) Middle English word study DUE Nov 3! Morte Darthur, 1-61, Sankgreal 462-506 Nov 10 Morte Darthur, Lancelot and Guinevere 580-620 Nov 17 Morte Darthur, Death of Arthur, 646-698 Nov 23 Malory, Prose Analyses DUE under my office door before noon Nov 24 Thanksgiving - no class Dec 1! Student presentations Dec 8! Student presentations Final Papers Due: Thursday, December 13, by NOON