Course Description:

The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of Man, Myth, and God for thousands of years.  The ancient Celts and their beliefs displaced earlier indigenous peoples and their Gods, only to find themselves displaced in turn.  The Romans conquered the British Celts, then abandoned them to the savage mercies of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, Germanic invaders who were themselves quite nearly overcome by an influx of their Scandinavian cousins and neighbors, the Vikings.  Each of these groups brought with it legends of heroes and myths of Gods, rites of sacrifice and other religious practices, belief systems peculiar to each culture, place, and era of origin.  With each succeeding wave of invasion, new mythic systems came into contact and conflict with the older systems already established in Britain.  Indeed, these waves of invasion themselves sometimes generated new mythic traditions, to which the legends of Arthur certainly attest.  New Gods sometimes supplanted old Gods, but often traditions merged and accommodated one another, bringing to life new, uniquely British mythic systems.  This accommodation is even true of Christianity, which was, for example, transformed by Celtic culture into something quite unlike its continental counterparts.  In Britain, as nowhere else in Europe, Germanic, Celtic, Classical, and Christian influences came into contact, conflict, and eventually confluence;  this assemblage of ancient heroes, Gods, and practices resulted, long after “pagan” beliefs were assumed dead and gone, with a particularly rich, fertile, and volatile medieval literary tradition, a tradition through which we may yet converse with the shadowy Gods of old. In this course we will discuss representative samples from these various mythic traditions.  It will be our object to place the myths in their historical and cultural contexts, discussing the points of contrast and confluence between the Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and Christian traditions, and examining the myths comparatively according to type.  Finally, we will conclude by examining a number of well-known and popular medieval texts that illustrate how ancient mythic traditions continued to be a cultural force in Britain centuries after the conversion to Christianity.

Course Requirements:

In this course we will study how each succeeding wave of invaders impacted the cultures already settled on the island of Britain, and we will look at how Medieval literature contains layers and layers of cultural material which may be extracted and examined in the light of this paradigm.  We'll go further than just utilizing an archaeological metaphor, however;  we will utilize Quick-time Virtual Reality (QTVR) technology to visit important cultural sites and use these as a springboard into discussions concerning the cultures at hand, the forces which conflated and transformed them, and what the material record has to tell us about literary traditions.  By combining digitized video footage, QTVR panoramas, static images, and simple maps, we can create useful virtual tours of significant sites.  “Virtual” means that such an electronic representation helps to impart an evocative impression of a site and that it is to some degree interactive.  These panoramas are “interactive” in that (by clicking and dragging the cursor on the screen with one’s mouse) one may manipulate the images.  Most simply put, by clicking and dragging the cursor, one can look around 360 degrees from the vantage point we chose when we recorded the panorama.  The viewer chooses the pace and the direction of examination, drawing upon the finite number of images filmed by the creator of the panorama.  As part of the course, each student will complete an individual research project on a literary topic and also will participate in a group attempt to construct a virtual tour from QTVR materials compiled on-site by the instructor.  This course, therefore, will be comprised of readings, lecture and discussion, individual research, collaborative work in student groups, and collaboration between instructor-centered research and presentation and student-centered research and presentation.  The course will also represent distance-learning in the extreme, as it will not only be taught simultaneously on two campuses, but will project these campuses into relevant archaeological and cultural sites across the Atlantic.

This course meets once a week in a seminar format, so regular attendance, preparation, and participation is presupposed and will be evaluated; in order to assess on-going comprehension of the material, there will be two short (one-hour) scheduled exams.  Most importantly, students will participate in the construction of a collaborative, web-based research project concerning "The Battle for Britain".  This participation will be comprised of  two main components:  1) a literary project which each student creates independently, and which concerns the conflation of various mythic traditions into a medieval English text;  2) a series of historical, cultural, and archaeological projects created collaboratively by small groups of students, concerning  the cultures and sites represented by the QTVR panoramas.  The former will be short (1500-3000 words) and must include certain stipulated multimedia and interactive elements;  the latter will be longer (probably 6000 words or more) and will involve the creation of an interactive virtual tour site by combining panoramas, static images, site maps, and explanatory text. Each student should be prepared to contribute about one quarter of the total work of a group project. The instructor will provide possible topics for the individual projects, although original ideas most often are encouraged (with prior approval).  There will be four group projects: 1) Pre-historic and Celtic Britain; 2) Roman Britain; 3) Anglo-Saxon Britain; 4) Viking Britain.

Required Texts:

Bradley, S.A.J., ed.  Anglo-Saxon Poetry.  Rutland, VT:  Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1994.

Chaucer, Geoffrey.  The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.  2nd ed.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Crossley-Holland, Kevin. The Norse Myths.  New York: Pantheon, 1981.

Fee, Christopher and David Adams Leeming. The Battle for Britain: The Conversion of the Ancient Gods of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.  Forthcoming from Oxford UP, 2000. Assorted xerox drafts.

Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.

Jones, Gwyn and Thomas Jones, trans. The Mabinogion. New rev. ed. Everyman Library. Rutland, VT: Charle E. Tuttle Co., 1993.

Kinsella, Thomas, trans.  The Tain.  Oxford:  Oxford UP, 1970.

Leeming, David Adams. The World of Myth. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.

Lewis, Thrope, trans.  The History of the Kings of Britain.  Reprint ed.  New York:  Viking Penguin, 1981.

Palsson, Hermann and Paul Edwards, trans. Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney. Penguin Classics ed. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987.

Stone, Brian, trans.  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  2nd ed.  New York:  Viking Penguin, 1959.

Webb, J. F., trans.  The Age of Bede.  Rev. ed.  New York:   Viking Penguin, 1998.

Instructor Information:

Instructor: C. Fee

Meeting Time: W 6:30-9:00

Meeting Place: Masters 117 (Teleconferencing Room) & Glatfelter 307 (English Department Computer Lab)

Office: G-313A

Office Hours: MWF 1:00-2:00, MW 3:30-4:30, and by appointment

Office Phone: (717) 337-6762

Home Phone: (717) 528-4799

E-mail: cfee@gettysburg.edu

Class E-mail: ENG-319-A@gettysburg.edu

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