In ENG 3701, we will read a variety of texts written in England between 1350 and 1500. While our focus is on literary texts, we will also read selections from a number of discourses, mainly medical, legal, and historical, in order to develop a sense of the culture that produced, and was produced by, such texts. How was the body constructed in the Middle Ages? How was the self constructed? How were social relations constructed? How did gender, race, and class intersect with constructions of the self and society? What did medieval "literary criticism" look like, in theory and in practice? To ask such questions is to read contextually, within the period, to the degree to which we are able. However, we will also read within our own contemporary context in order to discover a few of the continuities and discontinuities between then and now. We will explore how we have constructed the Middle Ages, and how such constructions work for us. (Think of Pulp Fiction, when Ving Rhames says: "I'm going to get medieval on your ass.") We'll read a handful of short poems (together with a few modern medievalized poems or poems with medieval themes), Chaucer's Knight's Tale, the Pearl, as well as excerpts from William Langland's Piers Plowman, Margery Kempe's Book, and Malory's Morte Darthur. Film: The Navigator, and excerpts from Pasolini's Canterbury Tales and the musical Camelot.