ENGL3781: World Medieval: Space, Histories, Orientations

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• To place the study of medieval literature in Britain and Europe in a global context of space and time, and to consider the difference that might make both to our perspectives on the subject and to the intellectual frameworks through which we conceive it.
• To extend the literary study of sources and influences into cultural contexts of time and place as evidenced by manuscripts, artefacts and medieval narratives of travel and trade, pilgrimage and war.
• To reflect on the cultural conditions in which the study of medieval literature was framed in the past and is conducted in the present, and to ask how a global orientation might change the direction and nature of such study. How, for example, do we accommodate an adequate history of international cultural contact in studies of national or European literature; and how should we, or can we, decentre European culture in face of what it knew only in part, or not at all, of the civilizations of our whole world?
• To bring medieval texts, manuscripts and artefacts into sustained conversation with our contemporary moment and the tools it provides primarily critical race theory, actor network theory and concepts such as identity, intersectionalities and mediality and to assess the extent to which medieval evidence is relevant to our contemporary concerns and historical moment.
• To ask how a global middle ages might be conceived, taught, brought into play in modern cultural politics, and - not least popularized.

• Orientations are about which way we face. Walter Benjamin pictured the Angel of History, facing the past and its rapidly accumulating debris, while being propelled by a storm into the future. Medieval studies as a field grew from national and Eurocentric inquiry in the nineteenth century, and medievalists today, facing the future, are debating the consequences of their origins and how to think past them in the face of our whole world. Beyond the academy, medieval devices and Viking helmets were conspicuous among those who attacked the US Capitol in January 2021, even as one English university decided that medieval literature was of little current consequence. This course, refuting both viewpoints, asks how the study of anglophone and European medieval literature may open into a serious attempt to think about our world including those parts unknown in medieval Europe and its past, and about the relevance of those pasts. It will address the question of how to look at the Middle Ages globally, using and supplementing skills acquired in the study of medieval English literature. Its scope will be broad in time from late classical to Early Modern, in geographic range (see below), and in conceptual scope (thinking, for example, about intersectionalities, actor network theory, critical race theory, and current issues to do with decolonizing). Each class will consider a literary text, canonical or other; a manuscript or material artefact; a keyword; and a place or space. Keywords will include some or all of the following: Race; Map; Farm, Garden, Colony; Pilgrimage, Exile, Exploration; Religion; Work, Poverty, Slavery; War, Crusade; Monstrosity; Stone; Clerkship and Craft; Time and Dream. Places may include: desert and wilderness; Tartary; ports (Calais, Venice); India; Jerusalem; Constantinople; Rome; North Africa, Spain, Sicily (Moors); Seljuk and Ottoman empires; new worlds; terra australis (the undiscovered southern lands).

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will be expected to have read widely in recent approaches to the study of medieval texts and artefacts in relation to space and place, history, race, ethnicity and material form, and thought deeply about the fundamental questions they raise; and to have engaged in a detailed inquiry into a work or group of works in their global contexts.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the analysis and comparison of texts and material artefacts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts, artefacts and critical approaches
• a comparative approach to the study of literary texts and material artefacts
• sensitivity to the original material contexts of texts and objects, and their cultural transmission
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies in a global context
• skills of effective communication and argument
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature and academic inquiry as a medium through which values are affirmed, contested and debated

Key Skills:

• a capacity to analyse critically across a range of historical and cultural contexts
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• a capacity for collaborative work
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills.

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology.
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work.
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar; informal position papers encourage students to advance claims and refine them in the light of seminar discussion
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the role played by the imagination in literary production and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

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