Medieval Romance: A Comparative Study

Romance was medieval culture’s most popular non-religious literary genre. It is also the genre that has had the largest influence on subsequent history. From modern science-fiction to the soap opera, there is no form of contemporary popular narrative that does not draw in some way on the conventions of medieval romance. This course charts the genre’s development from its emergence in eleventh-century Persia to its revivals in the courts of twelfth-century England, France, and Constantinople. Representative works include Chrétien de Troyes’ Cliges, The Knight of the Cart and The Story of the Grail; Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur; anonymous English poems, Pearl, Sir Orfeo, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; de Lorris and de Meun’s Romance of the Rose; Béroul’s Tristan and Iseult, and romances by female authors such as Marie de France and Christine de Pizan. Poems in translation from Anglo-Norman, Greek and Arabic sources also feature.

Fall, Spring, Summer

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