Old English Language and Culture

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to Old English, the Germanic language spoken by Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and its literature from 449 to 1100. It is designed to give English majors exposure to the language that influenced numerous poets and writers in England from Shakespeare and Milton to T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Seamus Heaney. In this course, we will study Old English grammar and translate Old English prose and poetry. To place translation activities within the larger context of culture, we will work with various forms of media to study medieval imagination as revealed in illuminated manuscripts, archaeology, music, and writing.