ENGL2101 - 01 - Romance & Conquest in Brit Lit

(LI) Literary Inquiry

This survey of British Literature introduces students to the international culture that produced the earliest formation of the British literary canon. Tales of chivalric love collide with visions of imperial conquest as the English literary tradition struggled to assert its value within the established European Romance language traditions. Adapted literary forms, like the epic, fabliau, and sonnet, take on a distinctly English style, and the visionary writings of early Christians personalized the influence of Christianity in orthodox and heretical ways. This literary tradition helped to define what it meant to identify as English or British and motivated the circulation of radical ideas about government that led to a bloody civil war and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.