This course will focus on some of the central and most significant texts from the Middle Ages which have withstood the test of time and continue to exert a tremendous fascination on us today. We will explore what some of the fundamental issues in human life have always been and how responses to them in the past prove to be most illuminating for us today. Some of those issues are: meaning of fortune/misfortune, happiness in human life, experience of death, loss of love, love itself, heroism and tragedy, friendship, gift giving, exploration of the unknown, religious conflicts and difference, the quest for God, and the meaning of life as such.
As diverse as those issues all seem to be, ultimately they all circle around the one and the same critical point, human life. Medieval literature offers a treasurehouse of most insightful examples of how to approach this huge question from many different perspectives.
