ENL 3210 - Spring 2026 - Sprenkle
Spring
2026
ENL 3210-0001
Medieval Literature in Translation: Chivalry in the Legends of King Arthur
Abigail Sprenkle
| “Chivalry” is a medieval concept with continued relevancy for our modern political and personal spheres. To try to make sense of the fraught legacy of chivalrous knights in contemporary imagination, we will venture to the medieval court of the legendary King Arthur, whose knights were supposedly the most honorable, romantic, and chivalrous in the world—and, like the Green Knight, we will test them. What were the requirements of the aristocratic warrior class known as knights, and how did the definition of “knighthood” shift from the earliest Welsh legends of Arthur through the last gasps of knightly warfare in Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Le Morte Darthur? How did the genre of courtly romance develop out of tales of violent conquest like the French chansons de geste, and what roles could women in play both in the stories themselves and in their creation? How rigid were the prescribed roles of Lady and Knight, and could knighthood offer opportunities to transgress the traditional gender binaries? How did the rhetoric and history of Christian crusades shape the intersections of race, religion, and empire within the values of chivalry? We will explore these questions and more in Arthurian texts such as Culhwch and Olwen, The Brut legends, Yvain, Lanval, Silence, Parzival, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale, among others. Meets Pre-1800 requirement |