Students Becoming Participant-Observers in the Arthurian Tradition

The author presents and critically examines a few strategies to promote learning by doing in an Arthurian Traditions course. The focus is on how to introduce creative writing students to writerly inquiries as a means to read medieval texts, and at the same time, how to introduce critical literary students to creative-criticism. Concepts of the auctor and the process of imitatio become central in analysing the mechanics and craft of texts and of the place for repetition and revision in the literary Tradition. The assessment brief is shared in detail, which tasks students to create an Arthurian text and then to edit that text. Developing editorial skills requires students to become alert to features from punctuation to paratext and ensures critical creativity in developing students to be writerly readers.