The Anglo-Saxon Seminar: Old English Poetry
Christina Von Nolcken, University of Chicago
This seminar was for students who had at least one previous course in Old English. It introduced them to a wide range of Old English poetry other than Beowulf as well as to the textual and critical discussion that accumulated around this poetry. Participants refer to facsimile editions as well as to the Newberry Library’s holdings in early editions of Anglo-Saxon texts when they considered the textual and editorial histories of some of these poems. Participants discussed the poems from various literary stances. Each week students were responsible for translating certain poems or parts of poems as well as for reading around them in both primary and secondary sources. Topics considered included the following: germanic legend, the heroic, the Bible, allegory, the enigmatic and the elegiac in Old English poetry.
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