Miyashiro, Adam. "Teaching the medieval epic." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/teaching-the-medieval-epic. [Date accessed].

Teaching the medieval epic

Expanding our understanding of the epic tradition across the medieval world.

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Adam Miyashiro
Stockton University

The medieval epic tradition contains deep wells of insight into the culture, traditions, and political values of the period. Teaching the epic contrapuntally and including texts outside of the European tradition gives students the opportunity to expand their understanding of the premodern world. Adam Miyashiro recommends teaching The Epic of Sunjata alongside European epics, like La Chanson de Roland and El Poema de Mio Cid, to offer students greater insight into a rich, multicultural, and multilinguistic medieval past.

Further learning

Video

Comparative epics: Teaching La Chanson de Roland

Contextualizing the political and racializing mission of La Chanson de Roland offers students a perspective on how epics shaped
—and were shaped by—the values of their historical moment.

Adam Miyashiro
Video

Comparative epics: Teaching El Cantar de Mio Cid

A mainstay of medieval literature classrooms, El Cantar de Mio Cid expands upon crusades rhetoric in the multicultural and multilingual Iberian Peninsula.

Adam Miyashiro
Video

Comparative epics: Teaching The Epic of Sunjata

The Sunjata is just one of many cultural touchstones from a highly sophisticated and capacious literary and arts culture that remains understudied in most medieval literature classrooms.

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Adam Miyashiro
Activity

Postcolonial theory and the medieval epic

Analyzing The Song of Roland and The Song of the Cid from a perspective of postcolonial theory. Students will write short papers identifying themes and images in medieval literature read through postcolonial frameworks.

Adam Miyashiro
Reading list

Reading the medieval epic

A reading list to expand students' understanding of the medieval epic by incorporating texts that decenter Europe.

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Adam Miyashiro
Syllabus

Comparative medieval literatures

Originally designed as a response to British and French imperial projects in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, postcolonial theories have posed challenges to the medieval and broader premodern world.

Adam Miyashiro

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Activity

The epic assignment

Dennis Britton's epic assignment asks students to collaboratively write an epic poem, considering the possibilities and limitations of the epic genre for defining who we are—or want to be—in our present moment. 

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Dennis Britton
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Selected annotated bibliography