Primary Texts
There are no books you have to buy for this seminar; instead, you are responsible for either photocopying the romances from the Short Loan versions, or printing out online versions. Photocopying is usually cheaper. Please note that I expect you to have copies of the texts in front of you in class; I don't mind if it's a hard copy or a text file on a laptop, as long as you have something to refer to.
Chrétien de Troyes, "The Knight with the Lion". In Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances, tr. William W. Kibler. London: Penguin. Book on Short Loan.
There is also a version up at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Yvain/
"King Horn". In Middle English Verse Romances (1966), ed. Donald E. Sands. New York: Holt, Rinehar and Winston. Book on Short Loan.
Web version (with very useful glossary) up at Rochester.
Translation (rough one by me) available here.
Thomas Chestre, "Sir Launfal". In Middle English Verse Romances (1966), ed. Donald E. Sands. New York: Holt, Rinehar and Winston. Book on Short Loan.
An online version is available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/launint.htm.
Translation (into modern prose) available in Short Loan (whole book is on Short Loan):
Edith Rickert (tr), "Launfal Miles." In Early English Romances in Verse, done into Modern English, Vol. 1: Romances of Love. London: Chatto and Windus, 1908.
Another online translation is available at http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/Arthurian.html: click on the first link of the list to download the PDF file (you'll need Adobe Acrobat).
Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath’s Tale". The Riverside Chaucer is on Short Loan.
An online version side-by-side with a modern English translation is available at http://www.librarius.com/canttran/wifetale/wifetale863-887.htm.
Sir Thomas Malory, "A Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot du Lake". Malory’s Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver, is on Short Loan.
An E-Text version is available at the University of Michigan's website .
A version in modernised English is available at the University of Virginia's site.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book III, "The Legend of Britomart". The Faerie Queene is on Short Loan, ed. A.C. Hamilton, and is also in the Norton Anthology set for your core course lectures. We will be dealing only with certain parts of The Faerie Queen, you can skip the bits between. See here for a list of the verses you need to study.
An e-version is available from http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/queene3.html.
Project Gutenberg also has an e-text, with an extensive glossary; go to http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6930 and click on the "Read Online" link above the table. On the next page, type "1176" into the "Goto Page" box, and you'll end up at Canto 1.
A partial re-telling of Britomart's story can be found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/sfq/sfq39.htm. Careful, the writer only covers certain episodes in Book III.
Secondary Texts
Please note that I may well add texts to this over the term; make sure you keep checking this page.
The Harvard Chaucer page is very good, and includes lots on romance; see http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/.
W. R. J. Barron (1987) English Medieval Romance. New York: Longman. Book on Short Loan. Chapters on romance, Chrétien de Troyes, "King Horn", Malory, "Sir Launfal".
Derek Brewer (1983) English Gothic Literature. London: Macmillan. Book on Short Loan. Chapters on "King Horn", Chaucer, Malory.
William Frank Bryan et al (1941) Sources and analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales . Chicago: Chicago UP. Book is on Short Loan. Chapter on romance roots of Wife of Bath's Tale.
Stevie Davies (1986) The idea of woman in Renaissance literature: the feminine reclaimed. Brighton: Harvester. Chapter on Spenser; see the section "Britomart to Florimell". Book is on Short Loan.
Heather Dubrow (2000) "Narrative, romance, and epic" in The Cambridge companion to English literature, 1500-1600 , edited by Arthur F. Kinney. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Book on Short Loan.
Maurice C. Evans (1970) Spenser’s anatomy of heroism: a commentary on "The Faerie Queene". Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Chapter 7, "Chastity," is on Britomart. Book is on Short Loan.
Sheila Fisher (2000) "Women and men in late medieval English romance", in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Book on Short Loan.
Northrop Frye (1957) Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP. Book on Short Loan.
-- (1976) The Secular Scripture. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP. Book on Short Loan.
Simon Gaunt (2000) "Romance and Other Genres", in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Book on Short Loan.
Frederic Jameson (1975) "Magical narrative: Romance as genre." New Literary History 7 (1), Autumn 1975. Photocopy on Short Loan; the article is also available on JSTOR, here.
Jeff Rider (2000) "The other worlds of romance", in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Book on Short Loan.
Corinne Saunders, ed. (2004) A companion to romance : from classical to contemporary. Malden: Blackwell. Book on Short Loan.
Background material
"Thomas Rhymer", a Child Ballad about a mortal man carried off to fairyland by the Faerie Queen. Verses 7-11 describe the three roads to Heaven, Hell and Fairyland."King Henry", the Child Ballad describing King Henry's encounter with a monstrous bride.
Just for fun
The script for Monty Python's Holy Grail.
