Università Roma Tre

Literature and ethics in medieval England

The course will focus on the analysis of medieval English texts, with references to other Germanic literary works. Special attention will be paid to those passages related to duplicity and flattery in works such as The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman. The texts will serve as the starting point for outlining the main characteristics of the literary and cultural milieu in which they were produced and for widening the students’ knowledge in the field of diachronic linguistics and textual tradition. Students will learn how to use the principle bibliographical instruments for carrying out individual researches and to set a text within its literary genre.
Seminars, with students’ presentations of individual researches, will be held. Visits to historical libraries will be planned.

Editions
- The Riverside Chaucer, L. Benson (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008.
- William Langland, Piers Plowman, E. Robertson - S.H.A. Shepherd (edd.), New York - London: Norton & Company 2006.

A selection of chapters from the following books:
- D. Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2002.
- P. Boitani, La letteratura del Medioevo inglese, Roma: Carocci 2001.
- M. P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600, The British Library: London 1990.
- A. M. Luiselli Fadda, Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel medioevo germanico, Roma-Bari: Laterza 2004 (Parte II).
- A. M. Luiselli Fadda, “Lectio Magistralis. L’arte della filologia”, in: Percepta rependere dona. Studi di filologia per Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda, a cura di C. Bologna, M. Mocan e P. Vaciago, Olschki: Firenze 2010, pp. xiii- xxvii.

- D. Crystal, The Stories of English, Penguin Books: London 2005,
or:
- G. Wolff, Deutsche Sprachgeschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, UTB: Stuttgart 2009.

Further material will be given at the beginning of the course.
Students are advised to attend classes. Those who cannot attend them are requested to contact the teacher at the beginning of the course.