The Voyage of St. Brendan

The Voyage of St. Brendan is an eight-week course designed to introduce students to the influential medieval traditions of the Brendan legend and to the Christian understanding of personal spiritual journey. This course will explore the Immrama literary tradition of the Irish Monks known as the Peregrini. Stories of pilgrimage from the Irish Monks span the fifth to ninth centuries and were adopted and expanded throughout Medieval Europe. While the stories of the Voyage of St. Brendan will be the primary focus, further connections will be made on the influence of this literature upon Dante and C. S. Lewis. The aim for this course is to glean understanding of spiritual growth and dependence upon God’s grace and provision. Students will be assigned reading appropriate for the week, relevant reading quizzes, once-weekly 2-hour live recitation, and a final 1200-word personal spiritual journal. In the course of the summer, students will have read all the texts listed below, taken 6 reading quizzes, written two short essays (300-400 words), and attended a minimum of 8 live class meetings to discuss the reading assignments in Socratic fashion.

Course Objectives:

At the conclusion of this course, students will:

1. Gain a greater appreciation for the literary tradition of medieval Christian pilgrimage,
2. Grow in literary criticism,
3. Form philosophical arguments that will support a biblically Christian worldview, and strengthen his/her own writing skills in philosophy and storytelling.
4. Artfully express the classical three-fold formulation of spiritual growth found in imaginative literature.
5. Describe the attributes of the protagonists and antagonists in the St. Brendan Pilgrimage Literature and what aspects they represent in a spiritual journey.
6. Understand the historical significance of the Immrama literary tradition of the monastic Irish Peregrini within the Medieval Christian literary tradition.
7. Relate the St. Brendan Christian Pilgrimage literature to one’s own personal spiritual journey and Growth.

Texts or Required Materials:

• Barron & Burgess, The Voyage of St. Brendan: Representative Versions of the Legend in English - Translation 1st edition. Exeter UK: Liverpool University Press. ISBN: 978-0859897556
• Other PDFs and articles as assigned by Instructor

Optional Texts:

• Dante: Inferno. Modern Library, Bilingual edition (2005) ISBN: 978-0345483577
• C. S. Lewis: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Harper Collins (1994) ISBN: 978-0064405027
• Olga Savin; The Way of the Pilgrim: and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Shambhala Classics; Boston (2001) ISBN: 978-1-57062-807-8