English 283 - Victorian Medievalism

Nancy Bradbury, Cornelia Pearsall

MW 1:10-2:30

Late nineteenth-century artists, architects, and writers looked back to the Middle Ages as an imaginative space in which to explore ideas about their own society.  Thus in the Victorian period we find an intriguing outbreak of interest in castles, knights, dragons, damsels in distress, ghosts, old manuscripts, minstrels, and dashing outlaws.  This interdisciplinary, team-taught course offers students the opportunity to study a variety of works from both periods - fiction, poetry, painting, architecture, political manifesto, scholarship - and the chance to discover how the later period reimagined the earlier one in the image of its own desires and aspirations.  Our topic will include Arthurian legend in medieval and nineteenth-century England, the gothic revival in British art and architecture, the cult of Chaucer, controversies over women's education, and the idealization of medieval communities in Victorian social theory.  This course satisfies the English Department requirement for a course prior to 1832.  Requirements include regular attendance and participation, two papers, and a final examination.