INDEX CURSUS: Wizards, Warriors, & Witches (CLCV 3930)
 

Last updated: August 11, 2026

Classics Program at BGSU Studies in Latin at BGSU Department of World Languages and Cultures Instagram: bgsu_languages Twitter: BGSU_Languages Facebook: BGSU Languages Bowling Green State University

James M. Pfundstein, Ph.D.
Shatzel 222
phone: 419-372-8278
e-mail: jmpfund@bgsu.edu
office hours: Tues. 12:30-1:20 or by appointment
web page: http://blogs.bgsu.edu/pfundblog/
Facebook: james.enge
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    The Matter of Britain:

Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Brittaniae (selections)

PDF available here (and elsewhere online):
https://archive.org/details/britishhistoryg01geofgoog/page/n6/mode/2up

Guest, Charlotte (transl.) Mabinogion (selections: “The Lady of the Fountain”; “Peredur, Son of Evrawc”)

PDF available here (and elsewhere online)
https://archive.org/details/mabinogion01schr

Weston, Jessie (transl.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1897)

original edition here (free, but in a rather soupy, marked-up PDF)
https://archive.org/details/sirgawaingreenkn00west

reprint edition here (not free, but you can get a clean hardcopy)
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight/HDfCAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook

Malory, Morte d’Arthur (selections)

in various formats at Project Gutenberg

volume 1: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1251

volume 2: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1252

as a single PDF at Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/lemortedarthursi00malorich

Matarasso, Pauline The Quest of the Holy Grail (Penguin, 1969)


Cable, The Death of King Arthur (Penguin, 1972)

The Matter of Rome

Hunt's modernized version of the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo is available at archive.org.

A PDF of Richard Scott-Robinson's modernized version of Octavian is here.

The Matter of France

Sayers, Dorothy (transl.) The Song of Roland (Penguin, 1957)

used copies available here

also online for free at archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/thesongofroland

Reynolds, Barbara (transl.) Ariosto: Orlando Furioso: Part One (Penguin, 1975)

Reynolds, Barbara (transl.) Ariosto: Orlando Furioso: Part Two (Penguin, 1977)

Online Resources:

What is standard manuscript formatting? For the purposes of this class, see the link below.

https://jamesenge.com/GenericMythArgument.wordformat.pdf

The T.E.A.M.S. Middle English texts series has an extremely rich website, including texts in Middle English, and jumping-off points for research, including the Robin Hood Project and (more relevant for our topic) the Camelot Project.

https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams

Bouchier (et al.), Huon of Bordeaux (Ruskin, 1985)

https://archive.org/details/huonofbordeauxdo00bernuoft

Alternate versions of Sir Orfeo: Tolkien's is online, but I'm dubious about whether the site has the legal right to post it. Another modernized version, by Richard Scott-Robinson, is here.

Weston's Gawain at the Grail Castle (1903) is online at The Internet Archive and elsewhere.

https://archive.org/details/SirGawainAtTheGrailCastle1903/page/n7/mode/2up

Here's a list of university resources and policies. I particularly recommend the resources.

https://jamesenge.com/BGSU.ResourcesAndPolicies.html

etc!
 
If you find any other good sources, let me know. I'll be expanding this section as more stuff comes to my attention.

Course Expectations:

1. Expectations for Behavior: Abide by Wheaton's Law. For details, see the BGSU Codes of Conduct.

2. Expectations for Learning: This is a survey course in medieval legends, and will involve readings in translation from a variety of sources (Latin, Welsh, Old French, Middle English). By the end of it you should have a good sense of what myth is (as opposed to, say, religion), and what medieval legend is in particular; you will have had a chance to read and write and think about these myths and their applicability to our culture and our time.

Survey courses are, of necessity, somewhat heterogeneous. This means that I'll be covering a lot of topics which may not obviously be related to each other, and also I will use a lot of words like "heterogeneous". You might think of the myths as the members of an extended family. They're not all the same, and none of them are exactly the same. But there is an undeniable organic relation between them, and the more of them you know the more you will see the resemblance.

3. About COVID-19 and masking protocols:

Here’s the deal. COVID-19 is a highly communicable and potentially deadly disease, and it's still around. I'm taking the risk of not using a mask in class, for the sake of clarity in my lectures, but if you want to use a mask in class, I urge you to do so. I would certainly do so if I were taking this class rather than lecturing in it.

4. AI Use Guidelines

It shouldn't come up for this class (where all the gradable work consists of closed-book, in-class assignments). But I say anyway: don't use generative AI (i.e. chatbots) for the assignments in this class. Setting aside the fact that chatbots routinely violate intellectual property law and are ethically and environmentally unsustainable, the technology does not work as advertised. It cannot cite required sources accurately, for instance (unless it happens to be plagiarizing a source that does). These programs don't create writing based on knowledge; they generate text using statistical probabilities and a very large database, a process that has been described as "stochastic parroting". If you've ever seen a weird autocomplete on your phone, be aware that this is what AI does routinely. It's instantly obvious to anyone who reads carefully, which is one of the things you're paying me to do.

"Aha, Pfundstein!" you may say in the silent precincts of your heart, "how will you know, know for a fact that I used AI? If not, how can you ban it?"

As someone charged with your intellectual well-being and development, I urge you to avoid that brain-rot caused by these things. But as far as the course goes: I grade for elements that generative AI can’t provide (e.g. accurate and relevant citations of specific evidence)—not to exclude slop generated by chatbots, but because the ability to do that stuff is a sign of actual intelligence (which, despite the name on the label, AI doesn’t have).