This course is required for English majors. We will begin by considering the formation of the canon, its rationales, and its cultural and commercial contexts. We will then examine one of the foundational texts in the canon, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, through close reading as well as through the perspectives of six major critical movements. We will later explore some of the significant recent trends (including narrative theory, postcolonial theory, queer theory, and ecocriticism) alongside the work of one of the most influential modern theorists, Michel Foucault. We will conclude with several projections for the future of theory in literary studies, from Franco Moretti’s “distant reading” to Rita Felski’s “enchantment.” Throughout the course, we will practice connecting the theoretical issues and readings to a variety of primary texts.
Tara Williams
Associate Professor of English
Oregon State University
Moreland 222
2550 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis,
OR
97331 USA
Tel:
541-737-1642
Email contact form
Credentials
- Ph.D. Rutgers University 2004
- B.A. University of Florida 1997
Research
Tara Williams teaches and works on medieval literature and culture, with a particular focus on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English texts. In her recent book, Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing (Ohio State University Press, 2011), she examines how ideas about womanhood evolved in the wake of the plague and traces a new set of terms—including womanhood and femininity—that Middle English writers coined to explore those changing ideas. She has also published articles on Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, and gender studies in journals such as Exemplaria, Chaucer Review, Modern Philology, and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. Her scholarship on pedagogical issues has appeared or is forthcoming in Profession, Pedagogy, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, and the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching the Canterbury Tales.
Her current project, provisionally titled Middle English Marvels, considers the connections between magic, spectacle, and morality in fourteenth-century texts like Sir Orfeo, Lybeaus Desconus, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Canterbury Tales; related essays can be found in New Medieval Literatures and on the postmedieval forum. This work has been supported by internal and external grants, including the Morton W. Bloomfield Fellowship at Harvard University.
Course Information
How has English evolved from the language of Beowulf (“Hwaet!”) to txt spk? Where do new words come from and how do such words (like “hellzapoppin’” or “D’oh”) get into the dictionary? In this course, we will consider the history of English from a chronological perspective while always keeping in mind its cultural and literary contexts; along the way, we’ll examine many quirks of English grammar and vocabulary. We’ll pay particular attention to how writers from the Middle Ages to the present have both reflected and reshaped the language of their time periods. Note: this class satisfies a pre-1800 requirement.
Textbooks:
- Lerer, Inventing English
- Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd edition)
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