Poet Simon Armitage goes on the trail of one of the jewels in the crown of British poetry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written about 600 years ago by an unknown author. The poem has got just about everything - it is an action-packed adventure, a ghost story, a steamy romance, a morality tale and the world's first eco-poem.
Armitage follows in the footsteps of the poem's hero, Gawain, through some of Britain's most beautiful and mystical landscapes and reveals why an absurd tale of a knight beheading a green giant is as relevant and compelling today as when it was written.

It is during the Middle Ages that modern Europe, indeed, modern Western culture as we know it, comes to be. Classical Mediterranean culture drew from the ancient Middle East, and more directly, from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The Middle Ages add the Northlands, Celts, and Germans, and ultimately, Slavs as well, to the mix. And the Middle Ages saw the birth of the immediate predecessors of our own ideas about love and marriage as important concerns in their own right, utterly central to a happy and fulfilling personal life.

Storyline: In a time now lost in the mists of memory, the great King Arthur rules in the legendary citadel that is Camelot. His Knights of the Round Table commit acts of derring-do and spend their spare time jousting, much to the delight of the local citizens and especially to Princess Ilene, a guest at Camelot. Watching her from afar is a young, inexperienced squire called Valiant, and when the young Welsh princess is sent home to marry Prince Arn, Valiant contrives to accompany her masquerading as Sir Gawain. Meanwhile, the evil sorceress Morgan le Fey, sister to King Arthur, has convinced the tyrannical Sligon, ruler of the Viking kingdom of Thule, that he should steal Arthur's sword, the powerful and magical Excalibur, knowing that its loss could bring about Arthur's downfall. So into the fray comes Sligon's unstable and psychotic brother Thagnar, who manages to steal the sword. Pandemonium reigns...

These 24 lectures, taught by the editor of the only scholarly quarterly in the world devoted solely to Arthurian lore, invite you to explore the time-honored and timeless legends of King Arthur and their links to the world of chivalry in the literature of the Middle Ages.
Professor Bonnie Wheeler shows why she has won teaching award after teaching award as she blends historical analysis with the study of literature to heighten your understanding of both.
Professor Wheeler offers this searching lecture series on the great chivalric romances of the Middle Ages and their tales of knightly quests, courtly love, and an extraordinary place called Camelot.
These lectures trace the development of the chivalric mentality in literature and thought from the Middle Ages to modern times.

The Western literary canon has come to epitomize the official—and sometimes controversial—list of works that every educated person should know.

Novelists, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, essayists, and philosophers—whether famous or anonymous, many of Western culture's greatest figures have been writers.