The course will provide a lively and wide-ranging introduction to the literature of the Middle Ages, in a survey that will attempt to place texts remote from our modern era in their social and historical contexts. Students will read and discuss the "classics" of the Old and Middle English period (e.g., _Beowulf_, a miscellany of Old English poems, and works by Chaucer, the anonymous-_Gawain_ poet, Margery Kempe, and other Middle English mystics). We will also a selection of lesser known items (ranging from runic inscriptions to treatments of Arthur that pre-date Malory). The informing critical theme of the course will be the theory of "syncretism" -- the process of cultural accommodation that may account for the fact, e.g., that the days of the week are name after pagan Norse gods. There will be a mid-term, final, and major term paper.