Browse Hierarchy ESH6078: Grief and Consolation: Writing Death in the Middle Ages

How did writers in the Middle Ages express grief and memorialise the dead? How did literature offer consolation or advice to those left behind? If death is universal responses to it differ greatly across times and cultures. This module explores the cultural attitudes to mourning in medieval literature, and the asks to what extent literature itself offers consolation to the living. This module will introduce you to a diverse range of medieval literary forms including lyric poetry, drama, philosophy, dream vision, and elegy. You will be supported in developing skills at reading in Middle English, the language of medieval England and Scotland.