© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal
The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
EN555: Medieval and Tudor Literature 
The module falls into two distinct but connected phases:
(I) Medieval: English literature exploded into existence in the late 1300s. Chaucer was its most influential representative, but his contemporaries are no less impressive. The unknown author of Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, wrote an enthralling narrative poem set in the days of King Arthur that stands comparison with the Canterbury Tales. It was also a time when alternative voices were heard in, say, The Book of Margery Kempe or Langland's Piers Plowman. Taken together, these texts provide the modern reader with an exhilarating introduction to key genres (e.g. romance, lyric) and modes of expression (e.g. allegory, satire) that were to become landmarks of the literary landscape.
(II) Tudor: The 1500s saw a new kind of beginning. Writers such as Wyatt, and Sidney recognised their debt to the middle ages, but they also stand at the threshold of the Renaissance, introducing new forms of expression, such as the sonnet, into an English context, and developing the possibilities of prose (e.g. More's Utopia). Nor are the voices of protest silenced, for the court exercised an influence that male and female writers found at once enabling and frustrating. The themes and theories covered by the module will vary in response to the lecture programme and to the emphases made by individual teachers, but they will be based on such topics as authorship, patronage, gender, sexuality, iconography, piety, personal identity, imagination, historicism, legend, medievalism, representation, audience, manuscript to print.
For further information,including preliminary reading, draft timetable and assessment pattern, please consult the module catalogue