Old English

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the language, literature, and culture of Anglo-Saxon England. Old English often has a bad reputation, as if the course itself were as dark and ghoulish as the monsters that Beowulf had to fight. Old English does require some work, though it can also be quite a bit of fun, because there is a great deal of interesting material in Old English that you won’t find anywhere else and that has nothing to do with sword and ogres and dragons (though there is some of that). By consciously recognizing what you already know about English, Old English can open up a new culture. In this course we will spend some time on a guided review of what you already know about English so you can apply that to thousand-year old texts. Then we’ll be ready for reading Old English texts: about daily life, magic, religious practices, gender roles, burial customs, tenth-century ladies fashions, shipwrecks, and so on.