Welcome to SPACE, our adult continuing education program which offers interactive monthly courses for personal enrichment! Learn more here.

Discussion-based
“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead… and men say that he shall come again…”

Is Arthur dead? Or was he taken to Avalon to be healed? And will he indeed come again one day? Written within the confines of a common prison, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur (c. 1470) addresses these very questions—trying to make sense of Arthur's legendary reign and “piteous” death for a war-torn England at the very close of the Middle Ages. In reading Malory's widely beloved and arguably definitive retelling of the death of the Arthur, this course examines the final dissolution of the Round Table, from the doomed love affair of Lancelot and Guinevere to Arthur's fatal (or near-fatal) wounding by Mordred—a continuous narrative contained within the last two books of Malory's sprawling chronicle, “The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” and the titular “The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur.” Told with a both poignant sense of loss and an undisguised enthusiasm for chivalric adventure, this lively and idiosyncratic tale of Arthur's death combines the best of all the Arthurian epics that preceded it, and would influence all those that would follow after.

Required Texts

Thomas Malory, Malory: Complete Works, edited by Eugene Vinaver. Alternatively, students may use the Project Gutenberg eBook of Le Morte d'Arthur provided the terms of the Project Gutenberg License can be met.
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Days and Times

Meeting Tues and Thurs at 2:00 PM Eastern for eight 1-hour sessions on June 1, 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, (skip 22 for Mythmoot), 27, 29.

If you have any questions about the SPACE program, please reach out to [email protected].