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EN256: Myths & Legends of Ireland and Britain

Spring Semester 2005

Monday and Thursday 3:30-4:45 in Canisius 303

Click here for the course syllabus.

Instructor: Robert Epstein

Office: 120 Donnarumma Hall

Office Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 2:00-4:00, or by appointment

Office extension: 2787

E-mail: repstein@mail.fairfield.edu

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

This course studies the literature of early medieval cultures of Ireland and Great Britain. The focus is on the surviving, large-scale works – epics, sagas, and tale cycles – that represent major repositories of ideas of nationhood or of the cultural values of the peoples that produced them. The first part of the course focuses on Ireland and the Táin Bó Cuailnge, as well as other Irish legends and their modern retellings, paricularly in period of Irish nationalism. We will then turn to the Welsh legends contained in the Mabinogion, to Latin Christian legends of British and Irish saints, and finally to the Old English epic Beowulf. Some of the critical issues we will discuss in relation to these texts include: the relationship between pagan and Christian elements; conceptions of law, kinship, and nationhood; warrior culture and the idea of the hero; the status of art and poetry; oral and scribal literary transmission; the construction of gender. In addition, the class will study important surviving examples of the arts and artifacts of these medieval cultures, such as the Irish Book of Kells, of which Dimenna-Nyselius Library owns a rare facsimile.

REQUIREMENTS

The most essential component of the course is class attendance and participation. All students are required to read closely the assignment for each class meeting and to attend class prepared to discuss it. Students are expected to be familiar with all of the material in the assigned readings both for class discussion and for the final exam.

There will be three essays due during the semester. Each essay will be approximately 5-6 pages long, and each will count for 30% of the grade for the course. As there will be no final exam, the last of the essays will be due on the date for which the class final is scheduled.

The final 10% of the grade will be based on class attendance and participation. Included in this portion will be additional, ungraded writing assignments, including brief "response papers" on the assigned readings.

Essays are due at the beginning of class on the day indicated on the syllabus. Unless I have explicitly granted an extension before the due date, late papers will be penalized one-third of a letter grade per day. (A paper that would have earned a B+ will receive a B if it is one day late, a B- if it is two days late, and so on.) Response papers are designed to facilitate class discussion; late response papers cannot be accepted.

FORMAT OF ESSAYS

All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center, but they are also summarized on pp. 148-150 of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual, with sample pages on pp. 151-154. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

ACADEMIC HONESTY

No secondary critical sources are required for the essays and written assignments assigned in this course, and in general I would prefer that you not use any. I am most interested in your own analysis of and response to the poems we read, as well as the thesis you are defending when comparing two poems.

You are, of course, always free to consult other sources. But any source that you use in writing an essay must be fully cited. The source must appear in the list of works cited at the end of the essay, and each source must be cited on every occasion that you make use of its words or ideas. This is true if the source is your primary source (the poem you are studying) or a critical source (an analysis of the work published elsewhere), and it is true if the source is printed or electronic, including internet sources. Follow the MLA style of in-text citation and lists of works cited described in A Pocket Style Manual, pp. 128-148.

The failure to fully cite sources within your submitted work is a form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, data, work, or language of others and submitting them as one’s own to satisfy the requirements of a course. Plagiarism constitutes theft and deceit. Special care should be taken, when cutting and pasting materials or when paraphrasing, to cite sources correctly and to use quotation marks around exact words from source materials. Actions that result in plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Consequently, students must understand the concept of plagiarism. When reading, processing, or using materials from any source, appropriate documentation is always essential.

Resources such as the library (ext. 2178) and the Writing Center (www.fairfield.edu/writingcenter) are available on campus to assist you in your academic endeavors. You are encouraged to take advantage of these resources.