Catalog Description:
In this course we will examine medieval European literature through the lens of ecocriticism to seek a better understanding of how different communities in the Middle Ages thought about the natural world around them. Through readings in ecocritical theory and medieval texts such as The Book of Secrets, bestiaries, lapidaries, the animal poems of Marie de France, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others we will explore how medieval Europeans understood their place in nature and the ethical, social, and political implications of their interactions with the non-human world. These readings will reveal to us medieval representations and conceptualizations of animals, plants, water, wastelands, and various landscapes as well as how medieval people conceived of and confronted environmental crises.
Course materials/schedule:
Nature in the Middle Ages
Excerpts from Alain of Lille, Bernard Silvestris, and The Prose Edda
The Book of Secrets
Romance Wildernesses
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Excerpts from the romances of Chrétien de Troyes
Animals in the Middle Ages
Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 764
Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore
The animal fables of Marie de France
The Owl and the Nightingale
Stones
The lapidary of Marbod of Rennes and other medieval lapidaries
Pearl (poems by the same author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Wastelands
Excerpts from Beowulf, the Life of St Guthlac, and Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss
Water
The Seafarer
Excerpts from The King’s Mirror and other texts
Narrating Foreign Landscapes
The writings of Gerald of Wales, Marco Polo, and John Mandeville