Fall 2008 Courses

The MCT designation is for courses of a general nature, that is, that are not limited to a single linguistic/national literary tradition.

Courses offered in the program that do concentrate on one language or literature have the designations MCTF (French), MCTG (German), MCTI (Italian), MCTS (Spanish).

MCT 3312. King Arthur in Europe II: Lancelot

Study of the medieval romances dealing with the figure of Sir Lancelot, knight and lover. Covers texts in Old Occitan, Old French, Middle High German, and Middle English: troubadour love lyric, the legend of Tristan and Iseut, Chrétien’s Knight of the Cart, the thirteenth-century Lancelot-Grail cycle, and the Morte d’Arthur of Thomas Malory.

MCT 3371 is a CLT Medieval Epoch course. Instructor: Maddux. Thur 7:00-9:50pm

For more information, go to King Arthur course description.

MCT 4324 The Menippean Tradition

Masters of a special variety of comic narrative that parodies and undercuts the conventions of “official” literary genres, stretching from antiquity to the present and including such writers as Seneca, Petronius, Lucian, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Carroll. If you are thirsting for irony and humor and a change from more solemn literature, this is a course not to miss.

MCT 4324 is a CLT Genre course. Instructor: Dupree. TuTh 12:30-1:50

MCT 4381. Contemporary Europe: Crossing Borders in Literature and Film

This course deals with borders and perceptions of “the other” on various levels, discussing personal, social, cultural, and national identity and otherness in European literature and film. We will look at political border-crossings between cultures and countries, issues of immigration and marginalization, borders of identity and the notion of the double, transgressions of social borders and the motif of the madman or social outcast, and the borders between reality and fiction.

A required course for the CLT major. Instructor: L Eidt. TuTh 2:00-3:20

For more information, go to Contemporary Europe course description or download the flyer.


MCTF 5311. Introduction to French LIterature

Taught in English, with texts in translation. A survey of the high points of French literature, with the double purpose of giving a sense of the scope and character of this literary tradition, and presenting in some depth its outstanding masterpieces. What every cultivated person needs to know about French literature, from the Song of Roland to Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past.

Instructor: Maddux. TuTh 11:00-12:20

MCTG 5311. German for Reading Knowledge

For those eager to arrive quickly at a reading knowledge of the language.

Cannot be used as part of the CLT major, but is highly recommended as an ancillary course.

Instructor: J-I Eidt. MW 3:00-4:20