February 2027 Modules

This four-week hybrid course reads Tolkien's mock-heroic tale as a work that repays close attention despite its comic surface, tracing how genre parody, class satire, and dragon lore combine into a coherent statement about heroism and storytelling.

Week One establishes the tale's pseudo-historical frame and its position within the medieval fabliau and burlesque romance traditions, alongside Tolkien's invented "Little Kingdom" and its Thames Valley geography.

Week Two turns to Giles himself as an unheroic hero, examining how comic inversion, social satire, and register-driven characterisation undercut the conventional dragon-slayer.

Week Three considers Chrysophylax Dives against the dragon tradition running from Fáfnir to Smaug, alongside the negotiation-over-combat plot and Garm the talking dog's unexpectedly shrewd commentary.

Week Four situates the tale within Tolkien's wider philological play and his theory of fairy-story, closing with the reception history that has grown up around a work often dismissed as minor.

For anyone who thinks of Tolkien chiefly as the architect of Middle-earth's high drama, Farmer Giles of Ham offers a delightful surprise: a slyly funny, deeply learned send-up of chivalric romance, complete with a reluctant farmer-hero, a dragon more interested in striking a deal than fighting to the death, and a dog with some of the story's best lines. Along the way, the course uncovers real bite beneath the comedy, in the tale's satire of rank and cowardice, its playful invented place-name history rooted in real English geography, and its quiet questions about who gets to be a hero and why. No prior familiarity with the tale is needed, only an appetite for Tolkien at his wittiest, and a willingness to take a "minor" comic story as seriously as it deserves.

The module will follow an 8-session structure and is shown by weeks:

Week	Topic
Week 1	A Mock-Heroic World — Origins, Genre, and Frame
Week 2	The Unheroic Hero — Giles, Class, and Comic Inversion
Week 3	Dragons and Dogs — Comedy, Negotiation, and the Dragon Tradition
Week 4	Philology, Legacy, and Meaning — Placing the Tale