OFFERED 2025-2026

• 2025-2026 Time and Tuition:
  • Mondays, 2:00 – 3:30 pm Eastern
  • Seminar with writing tutorial: $90 per month (10 months, August through May)
  • Seminar only: $75 per month (10 months, August through May)
• Location: Signal Mountain, Tennessee
• Grades: 9-12 AND 8th grade strong readers
• Prerequisite for tutorial portion: Writing III
• Pairing: You can pair this course with Medieval History!
• Description: Through works of Medieval and Renaissance literature, this course examines the great questions humans ask.
• Assessment:
  • All: Students must complete all readings and daily-work/commonplacing as well as oral exams.
  • Writing tutorial only: Each term, students compose one essay, one other written piece, and one project – choosing between an academic/artistic portfolio and a history-related handcraft. (Students in both history and literature courses only create one project per term.) In December and May, tutorial students participate in Defense Day by giving a brief presentation on one of their essays and responding to questions from the audience.
• FINAL BOOK LIST for 2025-2026: (Hard copies are required; recommended editions/translations are listed below)
  • Beowulf — (Tolkien translation, ISBN: 9780544442788) <= Needed for the first week of class
  • Song of Roland — (Sayers translation, ISBN: 9780140440751)
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien translation, ISBN: 9780358652977)
  • Dante – Divine Comedy – (Recommended: Esolen translation, ISBNs listed below)
    • Inferno (ISBN: 9780345483577)
    • Purgatory (ISBN: 9780812971255)
    • Paradise (ISBN: 9780812977264)
  • Chaucer — Canterbury Tales (Recommended: Coghill translation, ISBN: 9780140424386)
  • Malory — Morte d’Arthur – Penguin edition, edited by Janet Cowen; In two volumes (we will read both volumes): Volume 1 ISBN is ‎ 978-0140430431 and Volume 2 ISBN is 978-0140430448. Please be sure to purchase this edition, as other editions are heavily abbreviated and “translated” into modern English. The unabridged original clearly demonstrates Malory’s emphasis on the role of faith, forgiveness, and placing Christ above all other desires in the lives and deaths of Arthur and his knights.
  • Shakespeare — Henry V (Recommended: Folger edition, ISBN: 9780743484879)
  • Optional, but highly recommended: Shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry IV Parts 1 and 2