- Teacher: Lucie Kaempfer
Romances
were an extremely popular genre of texts in medieval England and are
fascinating texts to explore medieval cultural values, societal norms
and their transgressions. In this seminar we will look at one common
motif of romance: the hero's journeying into far-away lands: the
mysterious and tempting East. In this seminar we will explore how
different romances (love romance, fairy romance, Crusades romance,
nationalistic romance) construct different Orients. We will see how the
Orient is alternately represented as a magical, fairy-like place or a
`real' geographical place, a place of otherness and exoticism or a place
of political and religious conquest. We will familiarize ourselves with
critical theories such as Orientalism and place studies and read
important scholarship on otherness and racism in medieval literature.