ENGL 4305/5305, Medieval English Literatures, Course Syllabus

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• Description and Objectives
• Reading List
• Written Work
• Being There
• Tentative Schedule

1. Description and Objectives

Our course this summer brings together a variety of works whose common characteristic is perhaps a little odd: crossing water. In class I expect to develop the rationale for this group of works further, but the course need not be understood as a tightly integrated whole. It is, rather, a selection of works from the Old and Middle English periods that will allow us to revisit familiar literary territory with, perhaps, new eyes, and to explore some works we may never have entered before. Both kinds of journey will ask us to operate in an exploratory mode—trying to generate as many interesting problems and questions as we can in our brief time together with these works.

Medieval English Literatures naturally shares the objectives of the Department of English. For both its undergraduate and graduate students, the department intends that “students completing the . . . program in English will have a knowledge of the works, genres, and periods of English and American literature that compares favorably with that of . . . [students graduating from similar programs] at comparable American institutions.” Further, “students completing the . . . program in English will be capable of writing an essay on a literary topic that shows a knowledge of literature, an ability to convey that knowledge through effective writing skills, an ability to read a literary work with understanding, and an ability to support their conclusions with what they have discovered in their research.” (I quote from the department’s plans for assessing student achievement, published at http://www.uca.edu/assess/asplans/englplan.htm.)

This course will strive to make significant contributions to that knowledge and those skills. In particular, when we have finished this course we should find ourselves more conversant with the attitudes, preoccupations, and methods of medieval writing in the British Isles and more skillful in coming to terms with such writing and, for that matter, with literature of any kind. For my own courses I add a third objective, one that is personal and yet, or so it seems to me, important: to have increased our capacity for reading and experiencing literature with joy.

2. Reading List

Required readings this term will include Stanley Greenfield’s translation of Beowulf; my own translations of The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Battle of Maldon; Marie Borroff’s translation of Pearl; the Middle English romances King Horn and Sir Launfal (in Middle English, with some help from trots or glossaries); and Eugène Vinaver’s slightly regularized edition of the Middle English Death of King Arthur. We will have occasion during the term to refer more tangentially to other works, not all of them medieval.

At the bookstore:

Borroff, Marie, trans. Pearl: A New Verse Translation. New York: Norton, 1977.
Glenn, Jonathan, comp. Five Medieval Poems. Conway: UCA, 1997.
Greenfield, Stanley B., trans. A Readable Beowulf. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1982.
Vinaver, Eugène, ed. King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales by Sir Thomas Malory. London: Oxford UP, 1975.

3. Written Work

Written requirements for the course will involve one or, in the case of graduate students, two kinds of work.

Focused Questions (FQs): The FQs will be one of our chief tools for careful literary exploration during the term, an opportunity for every reader in our class to formulate what seems to her/him an interesting question about a work or group of works in our reading list this term. Each FQ has three essential parts:

1. The question itself (e.g., “What effect do the sea voyages that parenthesize Scyld Scefing’s life have on the involvement of the sea in the rest of Beowulf? Do we read the rest of the poem differently because of the way the poet begins the poem?”).
2. A detailed list of references in the literary work(s) essential to an answer to the question.
3. A preliminary answer or the beginnings of an answer to the question, developed in three or four cogent paragraphs.

All students in the class will, of course, prepare an FQ each week (see the schedule for due dates). Several members of the class will present their FQs for discussion during each class period at which FQs are due; by the end of term, all members of the class will have done so.

For an example of an FQ, click on the link (PDF format, Adobe Acrobat Reader required): Example FQ

Research Prospectus: Graduate students have an additional written responsibility this term: to define and develop a research prospectus. Probably the best way to think of such a task is as an extended FQ. That is, the research prospectus, like the FQ, identifies a significant question relating to a work or works and, like the FQ, it suggests the direction an answer might take. Unlike the FQ, however, the research prospectus goes beyond the boundary of the literary work itself in finding the resources to answer its question. The prospectus involves, that is, research into whatever sources may illuminate the issue at hand, whether those sources are other primary texts; works providing historical, cultural, or other contextual information; or secondary works of commentary or criticism, readings other scholars have given to the work(s) or issue(s) in question.

Concerns: These written requirements obviously limit the ways in which I can evaluate your work, but I will seek to minimize the potential problems in several ways.

1. I will treat the first FQ as a trial run. That is, you will get full credit for it, and I will provide commentary on it with the aim of identifying problem areas and correcting them.
2. You will complete the fourth FQ in response to a question I provide (possibly a list of questions from which you can choose).
3. I undertake to provide in class adequate guidance about a basic body of knowledge we ought to have in common about the period we are studying and the works we are reading. At the same time, I reaffirm my sense that I cannot be the hermit-knight of our opening day exemplum: I do not have ready for instant delivery a package of information adequate for all readers and purposes.
4. Graduate students and I will meet early in the term to look ahead to the research prospectus. I can elaborate at that time on my expectations for that project.

Evaluation of FQs: I will evaluate FQs in the following categories with the indicated weights:

I expect everyone to attend class regularly. Clearly it is important to a course of this kind, where we work together to create the “product,” to have all members in attendance as a general rule.

6. Tentative Schedule

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

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Jonathan A. Glenn, University of Central Arkansas
Updated 1997-07-08