6AAEC080 Imagining Britain: Medieval Places, Journeys, Maps
This module studies medieval narratives of journeys in, to and from Britain. These journeys
of conquest and conversion, pilgrimage, vision and quest allow examination of the relation
between humans and their natural and built environments. Issues considered will include
the shape of the medieval world; national identity and borders; the localisation of the sacred;
memory places; performance and ritual; the projection of self onto landscape; the agencies of
place. Its places include taverns, cathedrals, castles, cities, forests and Fairyland. Some of
them are still here, and attention will be paid to their continuing presence. A core of literary
texts is supplemented by visual and historical material.
Britain in/and the World
1. Introduction and concepts. Maps; extracts from foundation narratives and
descriptions of Britain
2. The uttermost edge. Gerald of Wales, History and Topography of Ireland
3. Conversion histories. Chaucer, Man of Law’s Tale; Bede, Historia
4.
5.
6.
7.
Travelling between Secular and Sacred
Civic self-imaging, performing histories, anachronism. York Entry into Jerusalem;
Entry of Henry VII to York
Local and international pilgrimage and tourism. Extracts from The Book of Margery
Kempe
Canterbury 1: the journey; tavern to cathedral to tavern. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
extracts; The Tale of Beryn
Canterbury 2: the destination. Life, miracles, shrine and images of Thomas Becket
In Legendary Britain
8. Landscape of palimpsest and portal: Sir Orfeo, the Luck of Edenhall
9. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1: from Camelot to the wilderness
10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 2: from Hautdesert to the Green Chapel
Assessment: 1 essay of 4000 words. Questions and instructions for submitting an essay plan
will be released mid-semester.
Please buy these books:
Gerald of Wales, History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John J. O’Meara (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1982)
The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: OUP, 2008)
The Works of the Gawain-Poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. Ad
Putter and Myra Stokes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2014)
The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition, ed. Barry Windeatt (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer,
2006)
Other primary texts will be included in a coursepack. Please get Gerald of Wales in advance
as we read it in week 2.
Preliminary critical reading
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(Verso, 2006)
John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis, eds, A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe
(Cambridge: Brewer, 2004)
Christopher Cannon, The Grounds of English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004)
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult
Middles (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
—, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)
Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge: Boydell,
2001)
Kathy Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature and English Community
1000-1534 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964)
Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Ben Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998)
Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveller (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989)
Gillian Rudd, Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007)
Lynn Staley, The Island Garden: England’s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)
Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological
Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)
David Wallace, Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn (Oxford: Blackwell,
2004)
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~dwallace/europe/