Prof. Mary Baine Campbell
English 152b: Arthurian Literature
Fall, 2015
Office: Rabb 263, ext. 6-2146
Office hours: Tuesday 1:30-3:00, Friday 9:30-10:30, and by appointment
E-mail:
TA: Kemal Onur Toker
Office: TBA; E-mail:
Office hours: Monday, 1:00-2:20
Texts to buy (shorter texts will be posted on LATTE for downloading). DO NOT BUY DIFFERENT EDITIONS: THEY WILL BE DIFFERENT, SOMETIMES VERY DIFFERENT, TRANSLATIONS--AND/OR BASED ON DIFFERENT MANUSCRIPTS!
Siobhan Davies, trans. from Welsh, The Mabinogion (Oxford University Press, 2007) ISBN:9780199218783.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, trans. from Latin and ed. Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Classics, 1977) ISBN-13:978-0140441703.
Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. from French (Penguin Classics, 2004), ISBN-13: 978-0140445213.
Marie Borroff, trans. from Middle English, Gawaine and the Green Knight (W. W. Norton & Co., 1967), ISBN-13: 978-0393097542. (If you buy it used, make sure it’s in “Very Good” condition: paper used in the 60s and 70s was frail!)
Thomas Malory, Sir, Le Morte d’Arthur, ed. Janet Cowen (Penguin Classics, 1970): Vol. 1:
ISBN-13: 978-0140430431; vol. 2: ISBN-13: 978-0140430448. NB: The bookstore forgot to order vol. 2 so it isn’t in yet.
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He was worthy in the front of a most generous army.
He gave out gifts from his drove of steeds in the winter.
He fed black ravens on the wall of the fortress, though he was not Arthur.
He gave support in battle.
--Aneirin, The Gododdin, Welsh poem c. 600
These lines describing someone else contain the earliest known documented record of Arthur, King of the Britons. They make a fitting "origin" for a mass of historical narrative, heroic and bardic poetry, myth, verse romance, prose allegories, and fictions of all kinds that now include opera, film, re-enactment, cartoon novel, and interactive software, all circling around a figure who is nearly always absent from the narrative, or acting in disguise, who is represented as the struggling overlord of one dominant race after another in the multi-ethnic history of the British Isles and west coast of France, but always as the overlord under invasion and siege from what will be the next dominant group.
This course will survey the literary manifestations of an ever-changing body of lore we have come to call "Arthurian" even in instances where Arthur plays no part at all. The material was still functioning in twentieth-century popular culture--indeed, it functioned with grotesque seriousness in the Nazi and proto-Nazi culture of Germany--and so the course will also consider later 19th- and 20th-century narrative in poetry, painting, opera and film, up to Monty Python's fine '70s parody of Sir Thomas Malory's early Renaissance versions (and the pretensions of Victorian rewriting); we’ll see the German director Hans Jürgen Syberberg’s famous production of Wagner’s Parsifal, which is also about the Nazi use of Wagner. We will concentrate, however, on the Arthurian narratives of the medieval and early Renaissance periods in England, Wales, and France. Literary issues that will make themselves felt most strongly will include intertextuality, "versionicity," and mimesis, the structures of emotion and value imagined or analyzed in romance, the relations of epic and romance to nationalism, and the cultural uses of literature that elaborates myths of origin or represents aristocratic (necessarily sexist and heterosexist) values and life-ways in a society dominated by its aristocracy. We will also be interested in perverse readings of such literature, and new possibilities for imaginative investment in it.
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WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: Weekly writing or critical questions, ungraded, are due the first class meeting of each week, also posted on LATTE. About one typed page, don't fret if you run over a bit. We will comment, but no late writing can be read. You will sometimes be asked specific questions, but often I’m merely looking to hear from you on the particular passages, characters, conventions, issues, formal devices you notice or are puzzled by; fully described critical questions are very welcome and will be taken up in class. The purposes of these writings are 1) to keep you caught up with lectures and discussions--they'll be meaningless and boring if you haven't done the reading, and with medieval and Renaissance literature especially, you need some grounding and discussion in the close vicinity of your reading to orient you and make it enjoyable; and 2) most importantly, I want to know what you are thinking, liking, bored with, having insights into, dismayed by, in order to make the course responsive to its actual students. (Not everyone is comfortable speculating aloud in class.) The Midterm Exam, due March 10, will be take-home: typed answers to essay questions, 800 words or about 3 pages in 12-point Times New Roman or CG Times. Final Essays (or, for the comically-inclined only, parodies with commentary) will be 6-8 pages long (full seminar papers for graduate students), based on a 250-word prospectus and a working bibliography to be turned in April 17 and reviewed and handed back in class by April 21. There will be an in-class test the 17th of short-answer identifications. Final essays are due December 11 in my department mailbox (Rabb 144) no later than 3:00 pm.
ATTENDANCE: As the Brandeis Bulletin says, attendance in class is expected. More than one week’s worth unexcused absences will be a cause for concern and intervention. There is nothing self-explanatory about medieval culture, and your pleasure in the readings will be much enhanced by better knowledge of that culture and its literary ways and means. This is NOT a course in modern fantasy literature, produced in the democratic countries of late capitalism! It is a course, mostly, in very strange literature, produced in different worlds from ours, a long time ago.
GRADING: Weekly writing, midterm exam, and final paper will each account for 1/3 of your grade, which will be modified by lack of consistent attendance. Your grade for the weekly writings will be based solely on the number turned in on time (remember, I cannot read late writing): A = all writing done, B = 1 missing, C = 2 missing, D = 3 missing. Students who are not English or Comparative Literature majors should be especially careful to avoid missing weekly writings: expectations for sophistication and know-how are high on the midterm and final paper, as this is an advanced course, open to graduate students. You can raise your grade level and get better at this kind of thinking by being scrupulous about the weekly writing.
ACADEMIC HONESTY: The Provost of the University has asked the faculty to include the following notice on our syllabi:
You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. The University policy on academic honesty is distributed annually as section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Instances of alleged academic dishonesty will be forwarded to the Office of Campus Life for possible referral to the Student Judicial System. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. If you have any questions about my expectations, please ask.
It seems hardly necessary to explain that turning in the words and ideas of others as your own work is dishonest, and contemptible. There is always another option. I've tried to design this course so that plagiarism will be largely irrelevant as a response to an assignment, but where it beckons: don't. Whose education is it?
ACCOMODATION FOR DISABILITY:
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
And one final requested message for our syllabi from the University:
Four-Credit Course (with three hours of class-time per week)
Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.).
SCHEDULE OF ASSIGNMENTS (writing assignments, exams and due dates in bold type):
MEDIEVAL ARTHURIANA: History and Romance
August 28: Introduction to the Matter of Britain, the corpus of Arthuriana, the fall of the Roman Empire; [xerox handout of excerpts from medieval historical works and from medieval Welsh poetry; excerpt from contemporary historian Guy Halsall (Worlds of Arthur).]
Sept. 1 and 4: The Latin chronicles (in your xerox handout from Friday, also uploaded on LATTE, from James Wilhelm and Norris Lacey, eds., The Romance of Arthur), and what we actually know of the period between the departure of the Romans from Britain and the Coing of the Roman missionary Augustine to reconvert Britain to Christianity (excerpts in your xerox packet and on LATTE from Guy Halsall, Worlds of Arthur chs. 2 and 4, “The Matter of Arthur” and “The Anti-Matter of Arthur”).
Sept. 8: The early Welsh materials (excerpt in packet and on LATTE from Wilhelm and Lacey).
Sept. 11: Anonymous Welsh storytellers, from The Mabinogian: “How Culhwch won Olwen” and “Rhonabwy’s Dream.” Read the Introduction to your volume as well.
Sept. 15: NO CLASS, ROSH HASHANAH
Sept. 18: Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (trans. Lewis Thorpe), Parts 4 and 5 (plus Thorpe’s Introduction).
Sept. 22 and 25: Geoffrey of Monmouth, History cont., Parts 6, 7 and beginning of 8 (to bottom of page 265); ON LATTE: “Early Responses to Geoffrey of Monmouth” (Appendix D, pp 287-291 in Michael A. Faletra trans., History of the Kings of Britain).
Sept. 29: NO CLASS, BRANDEIS MONDAY
Oct. 2: Chrétien de Troyes, Parsifal.
Film showing (optional): Friday 4:45-7:00 (pizza supplied), Eric Roehmer’s adorable film Perceval le Gallois (1978). Room TBA.
Oct. 6 and 9: Chrétien de Troyes: Yvain.
Oct. 13 and 16: Chrétien de Troyes: Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart.
Oct. 20 and 23: Anonymous (called the “Gawaine-poet,” or sometimes “Pearl-poet” after another of his or her finest works), Gawaine and the Green Knight, trans. Marie Borroff.
Oct. 27: Gawaine cont. Oct. 30: Catchup day.
Take-home midterm due in class Tuesday Nov. 4. No late exams without 24 hours notice, admissible in case of medical or family emergency.
RENAISSANCE ARTHURIANA: Sir Thomas Malory
Nov. 3 and 6: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur: Introduction (vii-xxxi), Editor’s Note (xxxiii), Renaissance printer William Caxton’s “Preface” (3-7), and Book I (9-59). Please note glossaries of names and archaic words in the back of the book!
Nov. 10 and 13: Malory, books II, III and IV (60-166).
Nov. 17 and 20: Malory’s “Quest del Sant Graal,” books XIII-XVII (238-372); brief excerpts on LATTE from French Prose Lancelot’s “Quest of the Holy Grail” (trans. Pauline Matarasso).
Nov, 24: Malory, books XVIII and XIX (373-455).
Dec. 1: Malory, Books XX and XXI (“the morte” of King Arthur, 456-532). Proposals for final papers, with bibliography where relevant, due in class. No extensions: if home sick send as file attachment. We will return them with comments Dec. 4.
MODERN ARTHURIANA: The Victorians (and beyond)
Dec. 4: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Dedication,” “Holy Grail” and “The Passing of Arthur” from Idylls of the King (1859-1885); discussion of Edwin Abbey’s “Quest of the Holy Grail” mural sequence in the Boston Public Library. You’ll prepare in part by visiting the BPL to look at the murals and take notes: enter through the old Dartmouth St. entrance, just a few yards from the Green Line’s Copley Square T stop on Boylston St. It’s simplest to take the Riverside branch of the Green Line from the Riverside stop, 10 minutes from Brandeis. Weekly writing should make reference to both poetic and visual representations.
Film showings Dec. 6 and Dec. 7: Sunday 7-9:30, Hans Jürgen Syberberg’s Parsifal, Part 1 (1982), a controversial film version of Richard Wagner’s late 19th-century opera; Monday 7-8:30, Syberberg, Parsifal, Part II. Venue TBA.
Dec. 8: Discussion of Syberberg’s Parsifal.
Film showing Dec. 8: 6:30-8:00, Monty Python, Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
Final essays due Friday, Dec. 11 at 1:00 pm in my departmental mailbox, Rabb 144. NOT ON THE WALL OUTSIDE MY OFFICE! Graduate seminar papers due Friday Dec. 18.