Satire and Social Criticism

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Satire and Social Criticism One of the best ways to get a sense of a culture's most cherished values (and its most hotly contested issues) is to consider what its writers choose to criticize and how they attempt to do so. With a goal of making us better interpreters of medieval culture as well as more clever readers, this seminar will examine some of the subtlest, funniest, most scandalous, and most critical literature—prose and verse, fiction and history—from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Our purview will include elaborate philosophical allegory, biting parody, and tales of talking animals. While focusing attention throughout on the complexity and elegance of medieval writers, the course will also encourage perspective on contemporary questions.