01 CAC MW4 12142 AIELLO MU-212
The Norman Conquest!
In the year 1066, a fleet of warships from Normandy, led by a duke, crossed the English Channel and forever changed the laws, landscapes, and literatures of England. The Norman victory transformed this duke into a king – William I of England, William the Conqueror – and began more than two centuries of French rule over England: colonial occupation, mass violence, forced transformation, and the suppression and denigration of the English language and its people.
English departments around the world treat this period as a literary “Dark Age,” when new literatures in English all but disappeared. This course explores a different argument: the English never stopped writing. Instead, they wrote in the margins, in the shadows, in forms the conquerors didn’t notice. Together, we will recover the defiant, grieving, and creative voices of the English people responding to their new Norman rulers, and we will read from a wide and exciting archive:
- the origins of the legend of Robin Hood
- early histories that challenge the Norman version of events
- romances of conquest, exile, and return
- fairy lais (short narrative poems) imaging alternative pasts and futures for England
- saints’ lives that become political allegories.
Along the way, we will also rethink the boundaries of a phrase used too freely in English departments – “English Literature.” Do literatures written in Latin and French by authors living in England constitute “English” literary productions? Can charms, hunting manuals, and grocery lists written in English be considered “Literature”?
Assignments include one short paper (4-5 pages), a mid-term exam, and either a second, longer paper (5-7 pages) or an equivalent creative project. No prior familiarity with medieval history or literature is required.