COMP 237
Medieval Worlds Fall 2024
Division I Writing Skills

While the word “medieval” was first used to designate the period in European history between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, historians and literary scholars frequently use the term to label periods in other regions and cultures that not only overlap chronologically with the European Middle Ages, but also appear to share similarities in terms of technology, social structures, and religious orientation. In this course we will focus on how medieval literary works from multiple traditions represented past events both public and personal, from conflicts that impacted huge swaths of society to the minutiae of an individual’s daily life. Readings will range from European verse epics such as the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf and a Chinese civil servant’s poem on the destruction wrought by war to the memoirs of a Japanese court lady and a set of narratives about influential women of the past by the first professional female writer in Europe. We will explore the stories these works tell about historical (or purportedly historical) events and their claims to historicity or truthfulness, asking questions such as: In an age where information traveled very differently from how it does today, how did people form an understanding of recent and historical events? How did people create, experience, and transmit literary texts in different medieval cultures? What roles did religion play in texts that are not explicitly religious? What does it mean to think of the medieval as a category across different cultures?