Università Roma Tre

Interpreting the landscape in medieval English literature


Motifs related to the representation of landscape and the natural environment in the Middle Ages will be identified through the reading of passages from Old and Middle English poetic works. How forests, gardens and trees, pleasant or wild places mark the narration and interact with the characters will be specifically dealt with in texts such as: Beowulf, Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl. References will also be made to other works from the Germanic world, both from the Continental and Norse traditions.
The philological-literary analysis of the texts will be accompanied by the study of the main lexical, morphological and syntactical changes that have occurred in the English language over the centuries.

Students (who will be guided in their choice of topics and bibliographic material) will be required to submit a paper, individually or in groups, on literary-historical, linguistic and textual topics related to works of the Germanic Middle Ages.

Texts:

- G. Brunetti (ed.), Beowulf, Roma: Carocci, (selection of passages).
- The Complete Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ascp/)
- L. D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1987 (selection of passages) .
- The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle English): https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/mect/index.htm
- M. Andrew and R. Waldron, edd., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Exeter: Exeter University Press 2007 (selections of passages).
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=Gawain (trad.: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/ready.htm)

Texts and critical essays:

- Ernst R. Curtius, Letteratura europea e medioevo latino, Scandicci (Firenze): La Nuova Italia,1992 , cap. X. Il paesaggio ideale, pp. 207-226.
- Paul Zumthor, La misura del mondo. La rappresentazione dello spazio nel Medio Evo, Bologna, Il mulino, 1995.
- Nicholas Howe,, “The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England: Inherited, Invented, Imagined.” In Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, edited by John Howe and Michael Wolfe, 91-112. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
- Margaret Gelling, The landscape of Beowulf, in AngloSaxon England, 32 (2001), pp. 7-11.
- William F. Woods, 2002. 'Nature and the Inner Man in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight .' Chaucer Review 36, 3 (2002), pp. 209-27.
- Paul A. Olson, 'Chaucer's Merchant and January's “Hevene in Erthe Heere”, in ELH 28, n. 3 (1961), pp. 203-214.
- Elizabeth Petroff, “Landscape in ‘Pearl’: The Transformation of Nature.” The Chaucer Review 16, no. 2 (1981), pp. 181–93.

History of medieval English literature:

- D. Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 (Chapters 1,2,6,21,26)
- P. Boitani, La letteratura del Medioevo inglese, Roma, Carocci 2001.

History of the English language:
- C. Barber, The English Language: a Historical Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009.

Textual criticism:
- Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda, Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel Medioevo germanico, Roma-Bari: Laterza 2004 (Parts II e III).

Additional bibliographical material (critical editions, glossaries, critical essays etc.) will be provided during the course.