The Department of English has a full array of courses on the fall 2021 schedule from composition to general studies to creative writing to advanced literature courses. Check out the UNK registration website MyBlue for more information.
Today we are featuring the popular course ENG 450 Seminar in World Literature that will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays (2:00-3:15 pm) in the fall.
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English 450: The Quester Hero in Western Literature and Film: The Broken Knight and the Redemptive Quest
Instructor: Dr. Rebecca Umland
“It is part of the critic’s business to show how all literary genres are derived from the quest-myth.”
-- Northrop Frye (Fables of Identity)
"In the season when trees bud, bushes leaf, and meadows turn green, when small birds sing their sweet morning songs in their own tongue, and everything is aflame with joy, the son of the widowed lady of the remote Desolate Forest rose, quickly saddled his hunting horse, and took three javelins in hand. Equipped in this manner, he at once left his mother's manor house . . .”
--Chretien de Troyes (Perceval, The Story of the Grail)
So begins the archetypal pattern of the quester hero in the west. Perceval, “the fool,” undertakes a quest that will not only transform his own life, but one that will also influence western literature (and film) for centuries to come. This seminar proposes to first identify what qualities make Perceval the archetypal quester hero, and then to study his imprimatur and that of his quest as it appears and reappears in literary and film texts. How is it employed in both medieval and modern texts, and how can we account for its enduring appeal?
To acquaint ourselves with the narrative quest pattern, we will read Chretien’s romance, Perceval (followed by short selections from the German Parzival and Sir Thomas Malory’s “Grail” section). We will read Jessie Weston’s study, From Ritual to Romance—a text that influenced both Eliot and Fitzgerald—and Richard Barber’s work, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. Possible post-medieval literary texts will be selected from the following: Henry von Ofterdingen, The Great Gatsby, The Waste Land, To the Lighthouse, The Castle, The Natural, and The Road.Likely films include Capra’s Lost Horizon, Gilliam’s The Fisher King, Romero’s Knightriders, and Lynch’s The Straight Story.
The Knight at the Crossroads (Витязь на распутье) by Viktor Vasnetsov, finished in 1878 (public domain)
For more course offerings from the Department of English, visit MyBlue Nebraska: LINK. See also information about ENG 254.01 Literature and Medicine HERE.