Knowledge of Pre-Conquest literature and history is an essential foundation for understanding subsequent literary tradition in English. Old English poetry inspired later poets, novelists, fantasy writers and film makers. Many ideas, generic forms, literary approaches and elements of poetic technique, that were used by Old English poets, continued to be popular in Post-Conquest literature, medieval and modern, and will be recognisable to students.
The course will introduce Old English poetic tradition focusing on its key themes and ideas. We will discuss major poetic genres and read texts representative of and exemplifying variations within thematic and formal classes of Old English verse. Students will become familiar with Old English heroic and Christian poetry, elegies and riddles. Close attention will be paid to poetic form, including metre and stylistic characteristics of poetry, such as its special vocabulary, phraseology and figurative devices. We will also discuss issues of composition, transmission and survival of poetry, and historical and cultural context of Old English literature.
Each session will include presentations by the Course Director on literary, historical, cultural and linguistic topics, illustrated by handouts and slides. All sessions will also include the reading of texts and commentary on texts by students and Course Director. Texts will be read in translation facing an Old English text and the discussion will proceed with reference to both the translation and the original. The course will therefore cater both for students with some previous knowledge of Old English and without.
