Literature of the Later Middle Ages EN2025

A diversity of genres, styles, dialects and literary traditions may be explored. The topics you may study include:

• social satire;
• the Arthurian tradition and uses of the Arthurian myth;
• shifts in literary technique, genre and attitudes toward women;
• myths of social and literary decadence;
• ideas of society and the individual;
• high and low culture, spirituality and secularity;
• chivalry and the figure of the knight;
• literacy and education;
• art and architecture;
• magic and the supernatural;
• medieval Scotland and the Scottish Chaucerians.

Learning outcomes

If you complete the course successfully, you should now:

• Be able to describe a range of genres and conventions in medieval writing and deploy critical concepts appropriate to the period in response to such conventions.
• Be able to show some facility in reading texts in the original.
• Be able to recognise some ways in which the writings articulate the period’s social and cultural assumptions.
• Be able to discuss gender implications in the texts.
• Be able to reflect critically on how texts articulate relations between individual and society.

Essential reading

Among texts and authors which students may choose to study are:

• Chaucer
• The Gawain poet
• Malory
• Henryson,
• The Breton lai
• Selected lyrics