Welcome to 'Literatures in Time'! We are delighted to have you with us as we explore some of the greatest hits from the Middle Ages! We are looking forward to meeting you in person in Week 2. Lectures run from 1-2pm in the Preston Lecture Theatre (ground floor of the Graduate Centre). Your seminar will run from 2-3pm OR from 3-4pm. Please check your timetable to confirm your seminar time, room, and leader's name. Attendance in both lectures and seminars are compulsory.
This module will introduce you to the foundations of English literature, from the earliest textual production in Anglo-Saxon England to the flourishing of English as a literary language in the later Middle Ages. It will give you a sense of the historical, political, social, and literary developments over eight centuries of writing in England. The medieval period saw the emergence of new literary forms in response to political and social upheaval. It witnessed the development of poetry in all genres, from epic verse to lyrics; the first recorded drama in English; the first writing by women in English; the invention of printing; and the use of literature to express and to shape religious experience. The Middle Ages also saw the transformation of the English language from Old to Middle English, and English literature of the period bears the influence of a range of texts written in other medieval languages (especially Latin and French), which were transmitted and read alongside English-language works. Over the semester, this module will give you a growing understanding of the purposes and effects, conscious and unconscious, of literary production and development; this understanding will be rooted in the historical moment. Much of the reading will be available to you in modern English translations, but you will also have the opportunity to read texts in their original Middle English, the language of Chaucer and other writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
