Descend into the medieval ‘Dark Zone,’ a world beneath the surface where dragons coil, cave-witches curse, and the earth itself becomes a site of danger, revelation, and transformation. This course plunges into the rich subterranean imagination of Old and Middle English literature, tracing caves, hollows, and underground spaces from the tenth through the sixteenth century.

Moving between sweeping thematic frameworks and analytical close reading, we will examine how caves function as mythic thresholds, spiritual testing grounds, and spaces of exile, prophecy, and refuge. Through attentive readings of canonical and lesser-known texts, students will discover how medieval writers used the underground to think through fear, faith, gender, power, and the limits of the known world.

Course Outline:

Week One
• Session 1: Let’s go spelunking! Plato’s Republic, Jung and more
• Session 2: Primordial ‘Earth halls’ in Old English poetry
Week Two
• Session 3: Subterranean worlds in Beowulf
• Session 4: Arthurian Caves
Week Three
• Session 5: Mapping Sir Gawain and the Green Knight's Green Chapel
• Session 6: Saturn’s “derke cote”: occult caves in Chaucer’s poetry
Week Four
• Session 7: Anchorites and cave-witches
• Session 8: Wookey Hole: a case study of a cave, history, and cultural imagination through time