Masterpieces of Medieval Literature

14 lectures on 7 compact discs

It is during the Middle Ages that modern Europe, indeed, modern Western culture as we know it, comes to be. Classical Mediterranean culture drew from the ancient Middle East, and more directly, from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The Middle Ages add the Northlands, Celts, and Germans, and ultimately, Slavs as well, to the mix. And the Middle Ages saw the birth of the immediate predecessors of our own ideas about love and marriage as important concerns in their own right, utterly central to a happy and fulfilling personal life. Beyond that, the Middle Ages saw the composition of some of the greatest and most rewarding literary works ever written, the works of Chaucer and Dante no doubt preeminent among them, but by no means are they alone in their surpassing merits.

In this course, we will look at some of those other splendid works - Beowulf, the little-known, but utterly splendid Njal's Saga, and Sir Gawain the Green Knight among them,

Lecture 1 Historical Background
Lecture 2 The Germanic North
Lecture 3 The Icelandic Family Sagas
Lecture 4 Njal's Saga
Lecture 5 Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
Lecture 6 Beowulf
Lecture 7 Anglo-Saxon Poetry
Lecture 8 The Celtic West: The Lais of Marie de France
Lecture 9 To the Sunny Southlands: Troubadour Poetry, Chivalry, Knighthood, and the Chanson de Geste
Lecture 10 The Matter of Arthur
Lecture 11 Chrйtien de Troyes
Lecture 12 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Lecture 13 Religious Literature
Lecture 14 The Later Middle Ages