IDS 3457 - Fall 2026 - Sprenkle

This is a course about adaptation, medievalism, and the Middle Ages. Students examine a body of medieval texts in their literary and cultural contexts, analyzing their reception and re-interpretation through the contemporary medium of film. Students also learn about the theory and practice of film adaptation in general, and the transformation of medieval texts to film in particular. We explore a range of medieval and modern genres and consider questions of transformation across time. For instance, what is the impact of entangling the fictional poem of Beowulf with the real historical account of 10th-century Muslim traveler Ibn Fadlan in The Thirteenth Warrior (1999)? How do three different films about the legendary King Arthur–Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Excalibur (1981), and King Arthur (2004)--pick and choose sources from a diverse medieval canon to speak to (or mock) the expectations of their modern audiences? Which films lean into their anachronism to try to thematically bridge the gap between the medieval and the modern (such as Thor Ragnarok (2017) and A Knight’s Tale (2001)) and which claim a historical legitimacy to their presentations, even if they are equally anachronistic? Ultimately, we will consider how modern filmmakers create fantasies of medieval worlds to speak to their own cultural and political moments. Readings will include excerpts from the Norse Edda, medieval histories by Saxo Grammaticus and Geoffrey of Monmouth, Ibn Fadlan’s travel accounts, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, among others.