Masterpieces of medieval literature

Masterpieces of medieval literature / Timothy B. Shutt.— Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, 2005.
7 sound discs (7 hr., 54 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 course guide (72 p. : col. ill. ; 22 cm.)
(Modern scholar)
ISBN: 1419377892; 1419377906 (course guide)
14 lectures delivered by Timothy B. Shutt, Professor, Kenyon College.
Contents: Historical background – The Germanic north – The Icelandic family sagas – Njal’s Saga – Anglo-Saxon attitudes – Beowulf – Anglo-Saxon poetry – The Celtic west: The lais of Marie de France – To the sunny southlands: troubadour poetry, chivalry, knighthood, and the Chanson de Geste – The matter of Arthur – Chrétien de Troyes – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Religious literature – The later middle ages.
Compact disc

1. Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism.

809.02

Fourteen lectures and a study guide comprise this lively survey of the outstanding examples of European literature from the sack of Rome to the first stirrings of the Renaissance in Italy. Shutt starts with the new influences coming from the North: the poems and sagas of the Germans and the Celts and then moves counter-clockwise geographically as he moves forward in time. He examines Icelandic sagas, Beowulf, and then the merging of the Northern and Mediterranean traditions in troubadour poetry and in the stories of Arthur: The lais of Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, before surveying religious literature and the impact of the calamities of the 1300s: global (or at least European) cooling and the black death.

What Professor Shutt may lack in rhetorical delivery—he often pauses mid-sentence as if lost in contemplation of his subject—he more than compensates for with his enthusiasm for, as well as his knowledge of, the literature. The accompanying text, the study guide edited by James Gallagher, not only reinforces the lessons of the lectures, but provides a marvelous bibliography of the works discussed in modern English translations.

Personally, it left me with the reader’s lament, “So many books. So little time.”