(offered every other Spring, Dr. Lee Templeton)Prerequisite: Six semester hours from ENG 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206 The literature of the European Middle Ages has had a profound impact on the modern imagination. This influence is nowhere more apparent than in the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. As a medieval scholar, Tolkien edited texts like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and wrote extensively on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, drawing on these works for inspiration for his own. This course is designed as a study of some of the medieval texts from which Tolkien drew, as well as the scholarly and fictional work of Tolkien himself, in order to trace the transformation of medieval texts in the popular modern imagination.