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Frequently Used Literary Terms and Titles (these pages under construction) |
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"Middle ages" is the label given to the centuries between the "classical" period and the rebirth of classical learning in the "renaissance." A stretch of time roughly from the eighth through the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The terms "middle ages" and "renaissance" have both been criticized by scholars because they show certain biases and foster inaccuracies in how we conceptualize history. The "middle ages" or the "dark ages" have suffered from being lumped together and ignored as a dark or primative time. Even the more common term "medieval" still has negative connotations today. However, medieval culture was rich and varied, encompassing not only the usual suspects--the plague, the crusades, King Arthur, and feudalism--but also the emergence of the individual, the first familiar expressions of romantic love, the growth of a money economy and the development of the university system. Although hegemonic Christianity often oppressed those of other faiths and a powerful sense of social hierarchy worked to keep women and the lower classes dependent, scholars working in the field of medieval studies have overthrown simplistic stereotypes of medieval society to show that it was as complex and dynamic in its own way as our twenty-first century culture. Many women could and did write literature; Jewish and Islamic cultures contributed significantly to medieval thought and learning. The exciting developments in this field are explored through our course offerings in medieval literature. The greatest hits of medieval literature (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, The Book of Margery Kempe, Dante's Divine Comedy, Malory's Mort d'Arthur, The Song of Roland, Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, etc.) are contextualized by discussions of the culture that gave rise to these works and supplemented by other popular genres such as the saint's life, religious works, and travel narratives. For instance, Eng. 346, Chaucer and His Age, focuses on Chaucer as a major figure whose work plumbs the depths of ribald comedy and soars to the heights of human achievement; he looks at life from all the angles of race, class, gender, spirituality, and philosophy with subtlety and humor: pretty good for a man from the "dark ages"!
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Revised: May 21, 2003
Contact: Prof. Christine Roth or Cary Henson