Outcasts in Medieval Literature and Culture

3-4 Credits

This course investigates how late medieval English writing features multiple types of outcasts including lepers, beggars, heretics, religious recluses, and so-called lunatics. How do these categories of exclusion function both to critique and to promote forms of hierarchy that privilege men over women, the rich over the poor, the faithful over the heretic, and the sane over the mentally ill? How do current social, ethical, and political ideals create categories of exclusion that potentially resonate with the premodern past? Attribute/Distribution: CC, HE, HU, W