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Medieval and Renaissance Romance

Hilary Term

Dr. Brendan O’Connell (co-ordinator), Dr. Ema Vyroubalova, Dr. Mark Faulkner

This course concentrates on one of the most significant and influential European genres

through selected texts, representing its variety from the Medieval to the Renaissance (Early

Modern) period. We will cover a number of texts, paying attention to the historical factors

affecting the development of the Romance mode (such as the Wars of the Roses and the

Protestant Reformation) major recurring thematic concerns (such as human perfectibility,

love and conflict, fate and free will), and the presentation of both Classical and Christian

outlooks on life.

Lecture Schedule:

Week 1: Introduction (BOC)

Week 2: The Anglo-Norman Background: The Romance of Horn and the early Middle

English King Horn (MF)

Week 3: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (BOC)

Week 4: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (BOC)

Week 5: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale (BOC)

Week 6: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale (BOC)

Week 7: Study Week

Week 8: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (BOC)

Week 9: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (BOC)

Week 10: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I (EV)

Week 11: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I (EV)

Week 12: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I (EV)

General:

A thorough introduction to the development and main motifs of romance can be found in

Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of

Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2004). A briefer introduction can be found

in Gail Ashton, Medieval English Romance in Context (London, 2010). Students interested in

the Romance mode more generally will find interesting studies in A Companion to Romance

From Classical to Contemporary, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford, 2004).

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The Romance of Horn and the early Middle English King Horn

The lecture in Week Two looks at the earliest romances written in England, romances written

not in English but in Anglo-Norman French, the language of the new elites who arrived in

England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of 1066. It focuses on one such

romance, King Horn, a story of love and heroism set against a pan-European backdrop,

initially composed in Anglo-Norman by one Thomas in the late twelfth century, then

translated into English by an anonymous English poet around a century later. Examining the

relationship between the two texts enables us to tease out some of the similarities and

differences between English romances and their earlier predecessors. Students will be

directed to the text of the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn at the start of the module, and a

secondary reading list will also be provided. The text of the Middle English King Horn can be

found in Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton,

Athelston, ed. by Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake and Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, 1997),

which can be found online at:

http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/salisbury-four-romances-of-england

Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The recommended edition is: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. by J.J. Anderson (London, 1996). This edition is

widely available online from second-hand booksellers or Amazon.

Secondary Reading

J.A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1977)

Ad Putter, An Introduction to the ‘Gawain’-poet, (London, 1998)

Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale

The Knight’s Tale is available in The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. with

introduction by Christopher Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). It is also

available in the Norton Critical Edition of The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the

General Prologue, ed. V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson (New York, 2005); students taking

Single Honors English, however, may find The Riverside Chaucer better value, as it includes

texts studied on other SH courses.

Secondary Reading

Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996), pp. 45-46

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Alastair Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge, 1982)

Elizabeth Salter, ‘Chaucer and Boccaccio: The Knight’s Tale’, in Malcolm Andrew (ed.),

Critical Essays on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Milton Keynes, 1991), 156-86

Malory, Le Morte Darthur

Note: Several editions of this text are in print, but it is essential that students use a text

based on the Winchester manuscript, not one based on Caxton’s printed edition. The

recommended text is: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, A Norton Critical Edition, ed.

Stephen H.A. Shepherd (New York, 2004). This edition contains a number of useful sources

and critical essays and represents good value for money. Also acceptable, and quite widely

available, is Malory, Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford, 1971). For this course, we will be

studying the final two books: ‘The Tale of Sir Launcelot and Quene Gwenyvere’ and ‘The

Deth of Arthur’.

Secondary Reading

Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (eds), A Companion to Malory (Cambridge, 1996).

C. David Benson, ‘The Ending of the Morte Darthur’, in Archibald and Edwards (eds), A

Companion to Malory, pp. 221-38.

Larry, D. Benson, Malory’s ‘Morte Darthur’ (Cambridge MA, 1977).

Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I:

The prescribed text is The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics), eds. Thomas Roche and

Patrick O'Donnell (London, 2003).

Biography

Gary Waller, Spenser: A Literary Life (Basingstoke, 1994).

General

A.C. Hamilton ed., The Spenser Encyclopedia (London, 1990).

G. Logan & G. Teskey, eds., ‘Unfolded Tales’: Essays on Renaissance Romance (London,

1989).

Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance (Princeton, 1979).

John N. King, Spenser's Poetry and the Reformation Tradition (Princeton, 1990).

Richard Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton and the Literary

System (Berkeley, 1983).

Louis Adrian Montrose: 'The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text', in Literary

Theory/ Renaissance Texts ed. Patricia Parker and David Quint (Baltimore, 1986), pp. 303-

340.

William A. Oram, ‘Spenser's Audiences, 1589-91’, Studies in Philology 100.4 (2003).

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Allegory

I. G. MacCaffrey, Spenser's Allegory: the Anatomy of Imagination (Princeton, 1976).

Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory (Ithaca, 1979).

Theology/Reformation

Andrew Hadfield, “Spenser And Religion-Yet Again,” SEL, Studies in English Literature, 51.1

(2011) pp. 21-46.

Anthea Hume, Edmund Spenser, Protestant Poet (Cambridge, 1984).

Book I

Harry Beger, Jr. “Archimago between Text and Countertext” SEL: Studies in English

Literature, 43.1 (2003), pp. 19-64.

Virgil K. Whitaker, 'The Theological Structure of The Faerie Queene, Book I', in A.C.

Hamilton ed., Essential Articles for the Study of Edmund Spenser (Hamden, 1972).

Judith Anderson, 'Redcrosse and the Descent into Hell', ELH 36.3 (1969): 470-92.