Advanced Topics in Literature II

Topic for Spring 2027: Beyond Chaucer: The Middle English Prose Brut. This class will produce for future students a scholarly edition of the prologue and first chapters of the Middle English prose Brut; these portions of the text cover the foundation and naming of the island of Britain first by the Syrian princess Albina and then by the Trojan grandson of Aeneas, Brutus. In this popular medieval “history” of Britain, students will encounter giants friendly and unfriendly, castaways and prophecies, scandal and internecine conflicts. More manuscripts of the ME prose Brut survive than any other text written in Middle English (that includes Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales!), with the exception of the Wycliffite translation of the Bible into English. Students will become familiar with this influential text as a window into the dominant secular strand of medieval historiography in Western Europe, with its links to stories of the fall of Troy and that city’s many inheritors and competitors—notably Rome but also, increasingly in the Middle Ages, the kingdoms of the Middle East. Students opting for the non-writing version of the course will complete fewer homework assignments and contribute in a smaller, though still meaningful, way to the critical-edition project.