L383 16020 STUDIES IN BRITISH OR COMMONWEALTH CULTURE
Shannon Gayk

2:30p-3:20p MWF (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.

TOPIC: “Holy Grails: Literature and the Religious Artifact in Early England”

Dan Brown’s recent bestseller, The DaVinci Code, propelled questions about the meaning of medieval and early modern artifacts and texts into public discourse: What was the “holy grail”? How was Mary Magdalene represented in early art and literature? How did the medieval church handle controversial religious ideas? What (and how) did images and objects mean in medieval and early modern England? How were they read and interpreted?

In this course we will address these questions and others by examining early literature about material “things.” We will discuss texts about objects and objects containing texts, focusing on religious art, relics, manuscripts, sacraments, and other ritual objects. We will also consider how the religious reformations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries affected the way we think about our own relationships with objects, religious or secular. While the course will focus on images and texts produced in England in the years surrounding the Protestant Reformation, we will begin with a discussion of The DaVinci Code as a means of raising questions about 1) the assumptions modern readers make about medieval literature and art, and 2) how objects and visual art were interpreted by their early English audiences. For the remainder of the semester we will read early English texts that raise similar issues, situating the works within their historical, religious, and visual contexts.

Texts will include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and dream visions, The Book of Margery Kempe, medieval drama, grail legends, religious and mystical lyrics, documents from heresy trials, and reformation poetry, propaganda, and polemics. Requirements include an in-class presentation on one author and/or text, a midterm exam, and a 10-12 page research paper.