ENGL 53.36 Game of Thrones: Re-Imagining Medieval History as an Allegory of the Present

This course is scheduled to coincide with the airing of the eighth (and final) season of Game of Thrones, and with Dartmouth Alumnus David Benioff’s tenure as Montgomery Fellow. Class participants will devote scrupulous interpretive attention to the six published works in A Song of Ice and Fire -- A Game of Thrones:  A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter. During the first five weeks of the course, students will be asked to explain what elements of the first of George R.R. Martin’s medieval romance, A Game of Thrones, Benioff and Weiss revised, or deleted in adapting it to each of the ten episodes in first season of Game of Thrones. The second five weeks will be devoted to discussions of each of the ten episodes of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones. In conducting these investigations, students will draw on a trove of library documents -- sagas, medieval romances, travel narratives, histories, legal documents, hagiographies, political tracts, philosophical discourses – and learn how the aforementioned disciplinary perspectives alter and enrich their understanding of these artifacts.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Course Group III