ENGL 260 - Literary Approaches to Poverty

FDR: HL
Credits: 3
Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. Examines literary responses to the experience of poverty, imaginative representations of human life in straitened circumstances, and arguments about the causes and consequences of poverty that appear in literature. Critical consideration of dominant paradigms (“the country and the city,” “the deserving poor,” “the two nations,” “from rags to riches,” “the fallen woman,” “the abyss”) augments reading based in cultural contexts. Historical focus will vary according to professor’s areas of interest and expertise.

Winter 2015 topic:

ENGL 260: Literary Approaches to Poverty: Medieval Poverty and Labor (3). Is poverty an ideal state of existence or a socioeconomic plight in need of fixing? Should the poor be put to work? In the Middle Ages, poverty was both a blessed condition of being and a dire social crisis. This course explores medieval experiences of poverty: estates, piety, charity, mendicancy, labor, gender, the Great Famine, Black Death, and urbanization. Texts include saint’s lives (St. Francis of Assisi), Thomas Aquinas, Piers Plowman, Shepherds’ Plays, Sir Orfeo, patient Griselda, and the legends of Robin Hood. We pay close attention to medieval understandings of poverty and labor, as well as modern parallels. All texts are read in modern English translation. (HL) Kao.