Havoc and Rebellion: Writing and Reading Later Medieval England

Overview

From the Black Death to the Uprising of 1381; from the usurpation and murder of King Richard II to the Oldcastle Rebellion of 1414; from the rise of the Lollard heresy to the Wars of the Roses – how did late medieval writing, from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and Gower’s Vox Clamantis, to the work of a range of anonymous poets, dramatists, and chroniclers, respond to several decades of tumultuous social and cultural change? This module introduces students to the vibrancy and vitality of a crucial period in the history of English writing, and it explores the methodological challenges of reading literature historically. Students will engage with key historicist readings of the period’s literature and will consider literature in its material circumstances with reference to online facsimiles of key manuscript books, as well as the museological presentation of the period’s material culture. The key genres, conventions and preoccupations of the period will be explored in relation to the explosive social mobility that followed the devastation of the Black Death. The module will conclude on the eve of the coronation of Henry VIII, when it was assumed that the political and religious tumult of the ‘calamitous fourteenth century’ had finally been settled.

Learning Objectives

Having completed this module, students will have developed an appropriate knowledge and understanding of late medieval literature and culture (c.1370-1509). They will have learned to address the challenges of reading literature in its historical contexts, and become familiar with the central tenets of historicist critical practice. They will have learned to interrogate critically the re-presentation of texts and artefacts from the Middle Ages in online archival and museological contexts. They will have learned to reflect critically on the idea of the Middle Ages itself and on questions of historical periodisation in general.

Skills

Having completed this module students will be able to:

• Analyse late medieval literature, paying attention to the relationship between texts and contexts assumed by historicist modes of reading.
• Demonstrate understanding of the complex relationship between literary forms and socio-political transformations.
• Situate the literature of this period in the contexts of its influence on literary ideas and modes of transmission, such as authorship and printing, that will be of critical importance to later periods
• Demonstrate enhanced digital capabilities, both in terms of using digital repositories and in working collaboratively on a digital project for assessment.

Assessment

None