English 189-2 - Spring, 2014

Seminar in Literary Studies

Topic: Wandering in Terms of Questing Knights

Class Information

Instructor: Vernon, Matthew
CRN: 22594
Time: TR 9:00-10:20
Location: 248 Voorhies

Description

Wandering Knights, Errant Detectives
This course will help us think through the use of wandering in literature. Our focus will be on the wandering knight and the ambit of characters around him –monsters, pilgrims, powerful women and the knight’s modern reinterpretation: the hard-boiled detective. These characters, by virtue of their movement through space and the flexible rules governing their powers, open a set of questions that few others in literature can address. We will examine wandering as a physical, psychological, and moral act that complicates notions of identity, gender, nationalism, and personal liberty. We will find that this literature is the space for critiques on the violence inherent in transgressing social boundaries. And by the end of the semester we will consider the point where wandering turns into the ultimate manifestation of being lost: the apocalypse.

Texts

The History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth
Arthurian Romances, Chretien de Troyes
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Njal's Saga
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Watchmen, Alan Moore
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Detective Stories, Edgar Allan Poe
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler