Autumn 2009     Call Number:     Credit/Hours:
Instructor: Knapp      Location:
Days:
Start Time:     Length:

Course Description:

Special Topic: John Gower. This course will focus on the works of John Gower, the friend and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. During his lifetime Gower was nearly as well known and admired as Chaucer. Like Chaucer, he was famous as a great story-teller, drawing stories from classical mythology, Biblical parable and popular legends. His work has all the literary complexity of the Canterbury Tales, but adds to it a remarkable meditation on nature and purpose of literature. We will spend most of our time with Gower’s poetry, but we will also use him as a window onto the broad scene of medieval culture, reading him alongside three of his most important source texts – Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and Alan de Lille’s Complaint of Nature. This course should thus provide both a picture of one of the most fascinating of medieval poets as well as a general introduction to late medieval literary culture. Requirements will include an essay, a midterm, and a final exam.