MA English (Texts and Contexts: Medieval to Renaissance)
MA in English - Texts and Contexts: Medieval to Renaissance
Period of Study: One Year
Course Components: Subject Unit: Taught Course in Texts and Contexts: Medieval to Renaissance. October to March, two 2-hours seminars per week, plus related work. Research Skills Unit: October to February, one 2-hour seminar per week, plus related work. Dissertation: Period of research: February to September (submission of dissertation in October)
Co-ordinator: Dr Ken Rooney (021) 490 1841 k.rooney@ucc.ie
Subject Unit
UCC provides a unique and privileged place in which to develop an advanced, interdisciplinary study of literature from the middle ages and Renaissance. Munster was home to a brilliant monastic and literary culture in the medieval period and also (in a far more problematic sense) to Elizabethan colonizers such as Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh. The physical remains of this experience reside on the surrounding landscape in counterpoint to the associated texts; we draw upon this heritage where appropriate.
Students choose two of the following options in the taught course:
Option A: Soldiers, Scholars and Saints - Old English Language and Literature to 1100
Option B: Literature in the Age of Chaucer - Middle English writing and its contexts 1100-1500
Option C: Literature in the Renaissance - Reform and Revolution
Topic areas may include:
- Interactions between pagan and Christian culture in the Anglo-Saxon period
- The heroic ethos in Old English literature
- Questions of identity, religion and belief in Middle English literature
- Middle English literature of mortality
- Gender, sexuality, and writing in the early modern period
- Elizabethan Ireland and early modern colonial writing
- Theories of authorship, reading, and books in material culture
- Film representations of the medieval and early modern periods.
Teaching staff: Professor James Knowles , Dr Andrew King , Dr Kenneth Rooney , Dr Juliet Hewish, Dr Carrie Griffin
Research Skills Unit - Information Literacy, Technology and Research
By means of a team-teaching technique plus self-paced interactive work, this component will familiarise students with the MLA style, equip them with fundamental skills in computing and related IT skills, enable them to convey their thoughts and ideas verbally in an academic environment, and research, access and evaluate library sources.
Dissertation
A dissertation equivalent to 15,000-17,000 words on an approved topic, written under the direction of an appropriate member of staff.
TAUGHT COURSE OPTIONS: DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS
Option A: Soldiers, Scholars and Saints: Old English Language and Literature (option co-ordinator: Dr J. Hewish)
This course option is divided into two parts. Students taking option A choose one of two ‘routes’; one designed to cater for those who are new to the study of Old English and the other for those who have some experience of the language and literature.
Route 1: This course aims to introduce students to the basics of Old English pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Using an interactive approach, it is intended that students will have a firm grounding in Old English grammar and should have gained some experience of translating a variety of prose and poetic texts. The course will include: The Old English Genesis, Ælfric’s Colloquy, Beowulf , The Battle of Maldon, The Wonders of the East, Magic and Charms, and The Wife’s Lament.
Route 2: In this course, we will examine a selection of historical and literary texts from the Old English period, including those which are ‘heroic’ in nature, but also a sample of religious, elegiac, and annalistic material. We will consider the transformation of Anglo-Saxon England from a pagan society grounded in the Germanic heroic code to a Christian community in which the vestiges of their pagan past still resounded, although in a novel guise. And we will examine the extent to which, in this new society, their history and literature is an account of the actions of brave men. Texts covered on the course will include: Wiðsith, Genesis A, Exodus, The Dream of the Rood, Cynewulf’s Juliana, Elene and Judith, selections from Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the works of King Alfred, and Beowulf.
Option B: Literature in the Age of Chaucer - Middle English writing and its contexts (option co-ordinator: Dr K. Rooney)
This course examines the literature of the later Middle Ages in English in the period 1100-1500 - from the aftermath of the Norman Conquest to the eve of the Reformation - a period marked by the gradual (re-)emergence of English as a language of significant literary achievement. We will trace the responses of English writers to the literatures and cultures of medieval Europe (including Ireland); explore literary engagement with social and political problems, and the imaginative responses to questions of identity, religion and belief. Intended as energetic seminars which use a wide range of interdisciplinary and theoretical approaches, students will study the following topics:
- The writings of the major English authors to emerge in the fourteenth century: Chaucer, the Gawain-poet, and Langland.
- Major traditions and genres: romance, drama, lyric poetry, visionary and historical narratives, social and religious satire.
- Medieval literary theory and the implications of the manuscript- and early print contexts of writing in both Britain and Ireland.
- Writing for, and by, women in the Middle Ages.
- Religious writing and the literature of mortality.
- Art and writing in the Middle Ages.
- Music and medieval and renaissance poetry.
Option C: Literature in the Renaissance: Reform and Revolution (option co-ordinator: Dr Andrew King)
The period c.1500 to 1660 witnessed the development of new as well as refashioned older forms of literary enquiry and response in the face of rapidly and profoundly changing cultural, political, and religious contexts. The interaction between texts and this complex background is at the heart of this module. We will be interested in how and why texts respond strategically and often provocatively to their reading and cultural contexts, often achieving brilliance in the face of extraordinary cultural pressures.
- Literature and politics in the Renaissance: Skelton, Sidney, Spenser.
- Spenser’s works and career: Elizabethan poet in England and Ireland.
- Early modern drama and its theatrical and performance contexts: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster, and others.
- Renaissance romance.
- Early modern reception of medieval literature.
- Reformation literature and ideas: Bale, Foxe, Askew.
- The figure of Queen Elizabeth in literature, performance, and iconography.
- Tudor, and Stuart women’s writing: Wroth, Lanyer and others.
- Poetry of ‘conceit’: Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Herrick, and others.
- Milton and Civil War literature.
- Early printed books: the literary implications of bibliographical study.
USEFUL LINKS FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
The National Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland - an exciting new virtual scholarly interface
The annual interdisciplinary Borderlines Postgraduate Conference in Medieval Studies - archive of past conferences since 2003, and announcements for forthcoming events
