WiSe 22/23: PS-Medieval English Literatures: Dream Visions and Revelatory Writings in Middle English Literature
Joshua Easterling
Comments
This course is an introduction to the literature of visionary and revelatory experience in England (ca. 1380 – 1420). The Middle English (dream)visions that we will read – Pearl, A Revelation of Purgatory, as well as excerpts from William Langland’s Piers Plowman and Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love – at once gave voice to and challenged the deeply conservative attitudes toward religious visions on the part of the late medieval clerical establishment within and beyond England. In this context, the course also examines the discourse of spiritual caution, or discretio spirtuum, allegory, biblical hermeneutics, medieval theories of vision, and a host of other subjects. These texts we explore are centrally concerned with the encroachment of lay spiriutality into the domain of clerical elites as well as with the dynamic interaction of religious experiences with the authority of the official church as the institutional body that pronounced on the veracity of such experineces.
Students enrolling for this course should have a solid background as readers of Middle English. Beyond the few print texts required for the course there will be a several additional primary and secondary resources available through blackboard. Students are expected to have print copies of all texts to be discussed during our regular meetings.
COURSE TEXTS
- Pearl, ed. Sarah Stanbury (Medieval Institute Publications, 2001).
- William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (Everyman, 1995).
- The Writings of Julian of Norwich, eds. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments