Class Archive

111/1

Chaucer

MW 5-6:30

111/1

Chaucer

MWF 1-2

For more information about this class, please contact Jennifer Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Love in the Middle Ages

MWF 10-11

Set aside the stereotypes: there’s more to medieval love than gallant knights and fair maidens. In this course, we'll traverse the many ways one could write about love before 1400. Some medieval authors cultivated divine love, while ...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

MW 5-6:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

166/3

Special Topics:
The Age of Crisis

TTh 3:30-5

(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Medieval Sexuality

TTh 5-6:30

For more information about this section of English 190, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

45A/1

Literature in English: Through Milton

Lectures MW 2-3 in 180 Tan (note new location) + one hour of discussion section per week in 301 Wheeler (sec. 101: F 2-3; sec. 102: F 3-4; sec. 103: Thurs. 10-11; sec. 104: Thurs. 11-12)

This is a story of discovering, then forgetting, then discovering again the fact that a particular language can be used not only for communication but also for creation. At the beginning of our story Caedmon, a shepherd, is called upon in his dream...(read more)

166/7

Special Topics:
Arthurian Romance

TTh 2-3:30

King Arthur and his Round Table together constitute one of the most enduring imaginative inventions in the European literary tradition. In the modern era, writers and artists have created Arthurian plays, films, poems, novels, cartoons, paintings, ...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

MWF 2-3

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

165/2

Special Topics:
The Pleasures of Allegory

MWF 12-1

If you want to understand both how stories are put together and how we experience stories, allegory is not a bad place to start. Broadly speaking, an allegory is a story that demands to be read on more than one level. One version of this&mdash...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer:
Canterbury Tales

MW 5-6:30

In the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer created a fictional pilgrimage in which travelers competed with one another to tell a tale “of best sentence and moost solaas”—meaning, a tale that best combines moral seriousness w...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Carnal Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

TTh 9:30-11

Medieval feminist scholar Carolyn Dinshaw has argued that the body is "a field on which issues of representation and interpretation are literally and metaphorically played out" ("Eunuch Hermeneutics," 27). This re...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TuWTh 9:30-12

In this course we will study The Canterbury Tales and its continuations, paying special attention to the topics of imitation, innovation, and literary influence. As we learn about the literary traditions Chaucer so deftly passes over and t...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

MWF 2-3

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

166/3

Special Topics:
Journeys: British World-Building, c. 700-1700

TTh 11-12:30

"Britain, formerly known as Albion, is an island in the ocean, lying towards the north west at a considerable distance from the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which together form the greater part of Europe." (Bede, Ecclesias...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic

TTh 12:30-2

Homer’s Iliad was composed in the eighth century BCE. Both the story that it narrated (the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans) and the particular form that the story took (the genre of the epic) would become foundational bui...(read more)

211/1

Chaucer:
Early Chaucer

M 3-6

Please note that this course description was revised on April 30.

This course focuses on the works that Chaucer wrote prior to the Canterbury Tales: the Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, House ...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

TTh 2-3:30

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

174/2

Literature and History:
History as Literature

TTh 3:30-5

Are the events of the world and human lives meaningful? And if they are, how do we discern the meaning?

History, as a form of narrative literature, seeks to answer these questions. In this class we will read a range of historical texts, w...(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Pagan Fictions in Christian Literature

TTh 5-6:30

Although late antique and medieval Christian authors routinely decried the falsehood of pagan literature, they could hardly get enough of it. Pagan mythology became not only a major inspiration of medieval poetry and philosophy but even a part of e...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

MWF 12-1

For more information about this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

180L/1

Lyric Verse

TTh 5-6:30 PM

This course will examine the historical trajectory of a very fuzzy category, “lyric,” from its identified origins and early practice in English (anonymous medieval lyrics) to its 20^th- and 21^st- cent...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Monsters, Exiles, and Outlaws in Medieval Literature

TTh 9:30-11

This course focuses on murderers, monsters, and thieves. Zombies, although not our main focus, also arise. Such figures are excluded from society and cut off from their fellow human beings, whether because they have committed an unpardonable crime ...(read more)

211/1

Chaucer

This course was canceled (on August 1).

111/1

Chaucer

TTh 3:30-5

The course will read Chaucer's two greatest works--the Canterbury Tales (easily one of the most entertaining works and one of the most compelling works in English) and the Troilus and Criseyde (perhaps less entertaining, but ...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Writing a World in Crisis: Medieval and Modern

MWF 1-2

Please note the changes in the topic, book list, and courses description of this class (as of November 22).

This course looks at two distinct moments in which individual authors attempted to create encyclopedic visions in an attemp...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland: Visions of Other Worlds in Medieval British Literature

MWF 9-10

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

170/1

Literature and the Arts:
The Deaths and Lives of Saints

MWF 11-12

The paradox of Western sainthood is summed up by a phrase from Latin calendars: dies natalis, “birthday.” Marking a saint’s chief feast, the dies natalis celebrates the day of his or her death: death as birth wi...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
The Medium Is the Message: Reading Poetry in Manuscript & Print, 1300-1600

TTh 9:30-11

Modern readers almost exclusively encounter medieval and Renaissance literature in highly mediated anthologies and scholarly editions, far removed from the manuscripts and early print books in which they first circulated. In this course, we will p...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Note new topic: Troy and Tragedy

TTh 11-12:30

Note the new topic (and book list and instructor):

From the earliest moments of the western literary tradition, the story of the fall of Troy has been associated with the genre of tragedy. This course charts that association from Ancient Ro...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

This course has been canceled.

180E/1

The Epic: Legends of Troy

TTh 2-3:30

Homer’s Iliad was composed in the eighth century BCE. Both the story that it narrated (the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans) and the particular form that the story took (the genre of the epic) would become foundational bu...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Medieval and Renaissance Lyric

TTh 2-3:30

From drinking songs and poems of seduction to works of religious meditation and devotion, the lyric reflects a variety of subjects and concerns.  This course serves as an extensive introduction to lyric poetry from the twelfth to the sixteent...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar:
Poetry and Poetics in the Middle Ages

TTh 2-3:30

This class will explore early England's shifting literary landscape in order to better understand what poetry was and what it was for in the Middle Ages. Juxtaposing our close analyses of individual poems and groups of poems with medieval theo...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

TTh 11-12:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

45A/1

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 12-1 + discussion sections F 12-1

This course will focus on three extraordinary works of late medieval and early modern English literature:  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Milton's Paradise Lost.  We'll...(read more)

45A/2

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 2-3 + discussion sections F 2-3

In this course you will explore some of the great foundational works of English literature, ranging from the very earliest period up to Milton's Paradise Lost. In the process, you will learn to understand--and even speak!--the forms o...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland - Visions of Other Worlds

MWF 2-3

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TTh 11-12:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

45A/1

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 2-3 + discussion sections F 2-3

This class introduces students to the production of poetic narrative in English through the close study of major works in that tradition: the Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Doctor Faustus, Donne's lyrics, and Paradise Lost.<...(read more)

45A/2

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 3-4 + discussion sections F 3-4

An introduction to English literary history from the fourteenth through the seventeent...(read more)

45A/1

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 11-12, + discussion sections F 11-12

This course will introduce students to Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, and Milton; to literary history as a mode of inquiry; and to the analysis of the way literature makes meaning, produces emotional experience, and shapes the way human beings think abo...(read more)

45A/2

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 1-2, + discussion sections F 1-2

In this course you will explore some of the great foundational works of English literature, ranging from the very earliest period up to Milton's Paradise Lost. In the process, you will learn to understand--and even speak!--the forms o...(read more)

190/8

Research Seminar:
Medieval English Poetry

TTh 12:30-2

The poetry of medieval England, often witty, sometimes moving, occasionally shocking, and frequently creative in form, style and use of language, has inspired poets including Seamus Heaney, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Geoffrey Hill. We will be explo...(read more)

212/1

Readings in Middle English:
The Auchinleck Manuscript

W 3-6

This course will consider a wide range of Middle English writing through examination of a single manuscript book surviving to us from the early fourteenth-century:  Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates' MS 19.2.1, now known ...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

TTh 3:30-5

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

110/1

Medieval Literature

TTh 2-3:30

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

MWF 2-3

110/1

Medieval Literature: The Alliterative Line, Tradition and Innovation

TTh 11-12:30

110/1

Medieval Literature: Before Chaucer - Philosophical Fictions from Vergil to Boccaccio

TTh 2-3:30

112/1

Middle English Literature

MWF 1-2

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

110/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Medieval Literature

TTh 9:30-11

111/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Chaucer

MW 5-6:30

112/1

:
Middle English Literature

MWF 2-3

111/1

Junior Coursework:
Chaucer

MWF 1-2

110/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Medieval Literature: Love in the Middle Ages

TTh 11-12:30

112/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Middle English Literature

TTh 12:30-2

110/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Medieval Literature

TTh 9:30-11

111/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Chaucer

TTh 9:30-11

112/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Middle English Literature

TTh 11-12:30