Text Box: Medieval Literature Professor Max Wickert MWF 12:00 - 12:50 Reg. No. 360516 Text Box: 305 Text Box: Modern English readers usually think of “medieval literature” as a British affair, centering on a single principal: Geoffrey Chaucer. But for Chaucer himself, literature was an international venture, centering on many names of eminent continental “clerkes” who wrote in Latin or French. This course will principally deal with these contintental masters, from Boethius, Macrobius and Alanus de Insulis to the French courtly romancers, and beyond them Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. We will certainly read or sample The Consolation of Philosophy, De Planctu Naturae, The Romance of the Rose, parts of the French Vulgate Arthur-cycle, the Vita Nuova, the Secretum of Petrarch, and the Decameron. Other texts will be announced. Moreover, a major segment of the course will concern itself with medieval allegory and typology. If time permits, we will conclude with a quick reading of Piers Plowman, masterpiece of Chaucer’s greatest contemporary, William Langland. This course satisfies an earlier literature requirement. Text Box: From Margarita Philosophica (1508): Boethius calculating with Arabic numerals with Pythagoras using an abacus.