A great summer class for anyone, student through adult,
is being offered at Mount Liberty College.
The perfect way to get a taste of what a great liberal arts education looks like!
King Arthur and The Matter of Britain
6 weeks beginning Wednesday, June 8th:
7:30-9 pm
King Arthur and The Matter of Britain:
In 1485, Thomas Malory published Le Morte d’Arthur, the world’s first best-seller (the printing press was only 30 years old). But Arthur’s history extends back a thousand years from that date and continues to resonate with us 600 years later. In this six-part course, Mount Liberty College professor Gordon S. Jones will explore the roots of Arthur as a British war captain, and follow the development of the story as it traveled west thru Wales and Ireland, south to Brittany, east to Burgundy, before re-crossing the English Channel for use by Malory.
Students and instructor will explore the fascination of Arthur and his knights for writers from Geoffery of Monmouth to Tennyson to Mark Twain to JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis to John Steinbeck to TH White, and why this iconic literary figure continues to figure so strongly in Western culture.
Students will be expected to read Malory’s Morte (for consistency, we will use the Oxford World Classics edition), but the instructor will liberally assign selections from his vast collection of Arthurian materials.
Week 1: The historical Arthur and his context and the “historical Arthur” down to Geoffrey of Monmouth, about 1100
Week 2: Accretions to the Arthur material from France, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, down to about 1400
Week 3: The “fixing” of the legend by Malory and his immediate French and English sources, in 1485.
Week 4: Post-Malory adaptations and accretions in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere, down to approximately 1600 (Shakespeare).
Week 5: The “fixing” of the legend in modern literature, with The Once and Future King and Camelot and Mary Stewart’s Merlin tetralogy.
Week 6: Arthur in popular culture.
Gordon S. Jones, NAS, Trustee and faculty at MLC: BA, U.S. History, Columbia University; MA, Education, Stanford University; M.Phil, Political Science, George Washington University; adjunct faculty at Utah Valley University and Salt Lake Community College; co-founder of United Families of America (now United Families International). Served as staff to members and committees of the U.S. House and Senate, and as director of congressional relations for a variety of federal departments and for several outside policy and political organizations and think tanks.