Course Requirements
This class is intended to give you a reading knowledge of Old English, the language of England from roughly 500 to 1100 and the ancestor of Modern English. In the past 1000 years our language has changed so much that Old English must be learned almost as a foreign language, but there is enough similarity to Modern English that it can be learned fairly quickly. Among medieval vernaculars Old English is unusually rich in surviving texts; about 30,000 lines of verse survive and about ten times as much prose. This course will give you the skill and, I hope, the interest to read much of this material in its original language.
In the first six weeks of the class, as we work through some basic prose texts, we will concentrate on learning the basic grammar and vocabulary of Old English. Weekly quizzes will help encourage you to keep up with the work presented, and help my judge how well I am explaining it to you. In the seventh week there will be a midterm exam which will include translation of passages already read in class and some grammatical questions. After the midterm the class will spend less time parsing sentences and more time on questions of literary style, culture, and history — though you should always be prepared to justify your translations and interpretations by explaining the basic grammar, syntax, and semantics of every sentence you read.
Course Requirements
- Attendance and participation, especially in-class translation. A reading listed on a given day is meant to be discussed on that day — please be prepared for each day’s work! You will receive a participation grade equivalent to an exam grade. If you can’t make it to class because of illness, accident or some other emergency, please let me know as soon as possible by e-mail or by phone (974-6970).
- Quizzes and in-class written work. At the end of the semester the quiz grades will be added together to make one grade equivalent to an exam.
- Two regular exams; the final counts more heavily than the midterm.
- A research project: a critical bibliography of any one of the texts read in class. Your bibliography should include at least twelve entries, an introduction about the text and a conclusion about its critical history; in it you will summarize each authors’ arguments and try to place their work in both a historical and a theoretical framework. We will discuss and develop the various stages of this project throughout the semester; if you have not done this before, the following sites might give you some idea of how to begin:
- How to Write Annotated Bibliographies (Memorial University)
- Writing a Critical Bibliography in the Health Sciences and Social Work (University of Toronto)
- How To Write Book Reviews
- How to Write an Annotated Bibliography (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Text
- Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 6th ed. (Blackwell, 2000).
- (recommended, but not required): J. Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons (Penguin, 1982).