Brief description
This module will begin with some definitions of 'epic' and 'romance', two terms which have traditionally been defined against one another, but which are, some recent literary historians have argued, intimately connected. Through a detailed study of some important texts, students will be encouraged to read literary works in terms of their generic characteristics as well as their historical contexts, and also to explore how individual writers use and transform the styles and materials tradationally associated with a particular genre. Topics to be considered will include: issues of gender and genre; the problematic relationship between secular and sacred values in poetry; the politics of the literary work; twentieth-century theories of epic and romance. The module will be taught in four sections: (1) the heroic English Epic (Beowulf); (2) medieval romance and epic form (Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde); (3) the Queen's epic romance (Spenser's The Faerie Queen); (4) the end of the English epic romance (Milton's Paradise Lost).