With apologies for the delay, here is this week’s course material on Mankind!

I’ve tried something a bit different this week. The ratio of lecture material to reading material is higher (more lecture, less reading, because the lectures are all attached to close readings of the one text). The idea is that the grand total of hours spent in preparation on your end should be roughly the same as usual; if it isn’t, I apologize — still working this thing out!  [There’s 90 minutes’ worth of pure lecture material (as opposed to the usual 50-ish minutes); in addition, as part of “ENG 330-5 Part 1,” you’ll be led through the first 325 lines of Mankind with 40 minutes of audio accompaniment (either me or the PLS actors). Assuming that the remaining 589 lines of Mankind takes you about 80 minutes to read, you’ll have put in roughly 3.5 hours by the time you’re done, as planned in the syllabus.]

(Note: I received the student feedback regarding volume levels only halfway through making this course content, so the volume levels herein may be quite patchy; it should be considerably better from here on out.)

To attach so much course content to a single text, I hope, will position Mankind as a sort of pivot point for ENG 330, allowing us to refer easily to it as a way of absorbing and applying the broader ideas we’ve learned. Meanwhile, by going so purposefully through that one text, I hope we will reach a new level of comprehension of Middle English. So here goes:

First, watch the ENG 330-5 Part 1 (which includes the 40 minutes of accompanied reading). In the middle of the lecture material, it will take you through a word-by-word translation of the first scene of Mankind; at the end, it will then transition into an audio-accompanied reading extending through line 325:

Right-click or command-click here to watch ENG 330-5 Part 1.

Next, watch ENG 330-5 Part 2. It will dilate on some broader points of theory and history, then bring them to bear on a reading of one particular scene:

Right-click or command-click here to watch ENG 330-5 Part 2.

After that, read the remainder of Mankind in the TEAMS edition, keeping in mind the mini-assignment that I presented in Part 2 (which you’ll have to be ready to share on Monday). I invite you to read the remainder alongside one of the showings of the PLS production (https://youtu.be/qQGji_BhrGQ, starting from timestamp 29:21) or alongside the digitized manuscript (at luna.folger.edu); you can also just read the TEAMS edition by itself.

After you’ve finished reading, there’s a short, 20-minute coda, ENG 330-5 Part 3. (I admit that the recording quality of this lecture is less-than-ideal, with apologies).

Right-click or command-click here to watch ENG 330-5 Part 3.