ENGL 238 - Middle English Literature

1 unit(s)

Topic for 2017/18b: Medieval Travel Writing. Examining medieval travel literature from the Old English period to the early exploration accounts of sixteenth-century explorers in the New World, this class considers how the area of medieval travel writing exposes how race is framed in relation to gender, disability, multifaith encounters, critical animal studies, and thick mapping. We look at pilgrimage accounts to Rome and Jerusalem, the Old English Wonders of the East, Alexander romances, medieval mappa mundi including the Hereford World Map, medieval bestiaries, The Book of Margery Kempe, crusader romances including Beves of Hamtoun, King Horn, and Richard Coer de Lion, the letter of Prester John, and the Siege of Jerusalem. We examine what “global Middle Ages” means in examining the travel writing of the Mediterranean from the point of views of Jewish and Muslim writers. In this class, we think about bodily wonders: troglodytes, giants, “monsters,” fabulous beasts, and dragons. We also think about how these texts develop imaginary or historical encounters with divergent bodies: fairies, elves, green children, Saracens, Jews, demons, Ethiopians. We encounter some cannibalism, interfaith and interracial marriages, miracles both religious and political, and the early constructions of race that becomes the background behind Western Europe’s “contact” with the New World. Along with a regular research paper for the class, students work on creating a small DH project to think through medieval and digital mapping. We use Story Maps by Ersi (free online) as well as google maps to consider the stakes of critical cartography. Dorothy Kim.

Not offered in 2017/18.