01   W 4,5  CAC  70718  SCANLON  MU-207

01-Medieval America

While the first Europeans reached the New World as the Middle Ages was ending, by the time the United States established itself as an independent nation, the Middle Ages was three centuries in the past.  Nevertheless, medieval notions, cultural forms, and institutional and social structures, have continued to influence modernity, sometimes as traces or remnants, sometimes more integrally.  Sometimes modern culture recognizes the influence.  More often it does not.  Engagement with the medieval, as a past, as an ideal, and through the continuing influence of its literary and cultural traditions has been an important feature of American literature from the colonial period to present.  This course will provide an in-depth introduction to this phenomenon, using major texts from both the medieval and the American tradition.  Issues for discussion include the medieval past as lost ideal; the complex legacy of medieval romance, discourses of laureation, allegorical inheritances of modern realistic narrative; agrarianism and other revisions of Christian humility.  Previous experience with Middle English, while helpful is not necessary.

Requirements:

• Regular attendance
• Translation quizzes and other in-class exercises
• Three papers: 2-3 pp., 3-5 pp., 8-10 pp.

Reading:

Geoffrey Chaucer, “ABC,” the House of Fame, and selections from the Canterbury Tales.

ChrJtien de Troyes, The Knight of the Cart.

Everyman.

William Langland, Piers Plowman (A text).

Selected Anglo-Saxon and Middle English lyrics.

Henry Adams, “The Virgin and the Dynamo.”

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

Langston Hughes, Ask Your Mama.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia.

Ezra Pound, selected poems.

Philip Roth, Everyman.

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.