This course will introduce students to some of the most exciting, innovative texts written during the great transformation of the English literary scene in the late fourteenth century. During this slow revolution, new voices reached new audiences by choosing to write in the native language of most English people (as opposed to the more prestigious French or Latin) about religion, science, cultural contact, politics, and social criticism; and some of them also self-consciously linked this new English literature to classical traditions. Sampling texts from a variety of social origins — court, cloister, and city — we will start with Mandeville, Travels, the most popular travel narrative ever written; then survey the bold new adaptations of Biblical narratives, as well as visionary and even heretical religious writings; and finally read the searing social, political, and religious critiques in some of the great long poems of Chaucer’s lifetime, selecting from among the dream vision Piers the Plowman, John Gower’s framed story collection Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession — in English, despite the Latin title!), and Chaucer’s own Legend of Good Women and Canterbury Tales.

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