Courses

This class is an introduction to the language and literature of England from around the 8th to the 11th century. Because this is in part a language class, we will spend much time studying the grammar. Learning to read the language teaches us not only about early medieval culture and language development, but also much about our own interpretive processes: it also provides access to the oldest literature in English. While this course provides a general historical framework for the period, it will take a close look at how each text elicits response, not only in relation to the text and its particular context, but in relation to the past, the intimate, the feared, the imagined, the every-day. We will look at how the works we read contextualizes (or recontextualizes) relationships between the human and the divine, the natural and artifice, the Saxon and the Norse. Final projects will involve translating and interpreting a riddle.