Jana K. Schulman, Western Michigan University
Fridays,
2:00-5:00 pm, January 13 - March 17, 2006
The legal texts of Anglo-Saxon England tell us much about the community
that produced them; that community produced great literary works as well. We
can read legal texts as narratives devised by a particular community to
regulate action and interaction within the community. I take the literary
narratives as products of that same community, connected to and part of the
legal community. After all, stories are the means by which communities tell (or
write) their dreams, their myths, their histories, and their legal and social
institutions.
Thus, as legal scholars have observed, both literature and
law provide texts that define society. Furthermore, they are intimately
connected, since "as branches of . . . culture they are subject to the same
forces and they react jointly to them" (James Hopkins). Both are forged in a
social milieu, and both deal with moral values and human relations. "Literature
reflects knowledge about true human nature; law governs societal activity based
upon a formulation of true human nature" (Marijane Camilleri).
This
seminar will explore legal issues such as feud, marriage and the status of
women, and theft. We will read and translate the legal texts that discuss these
issues and then see how literary texts incorporate legal elements to create
tension and drive the narrative. Some primary texts include laws issued by
Æthelberht, Alfred, Edmund, and Canute as well as selections from
Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "Juliana," and
"Maxims I." Much has been written on feud in early Germanic societies,
less perhaps on women and law, but the secondary sources assigned on these and
other issues help clarify the abbreviated language of the legal texts as well
as provide background and fuel for discussion.
Primary Texts:
Literary
Beowulf
Maxims I
Juliana
"Cynewulf and Cyneheard" and other selections from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle
Primary Texts: Legal
Laws of the
Earliest English Kings. F.L. Attenborough ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1922.
The Laws of the Kings of England. A.J.
Robertson ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925.
Textus
Roffensis. Peter Sawyer ed. EEMF 7 (1957). [Facsimile of manuscript
containing many if not all of the laws of Anglo-Saxon England, at the Newberry]
Secondary Sources
Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of
English Law Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. [Selections
assigned as relevant]
Mary Richards. "The Manuscript
Contexts of the Old English Laws: Tradition and Innovation." Studies
in Earlier Old English Prose. Paul.E. Szarmach ed. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1986.
Dorothy Whitelock, "The Law" The Beginnings of English Society
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952.
Patrick.Wormald, The Making of English law:
King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
[Selections assigned as relevant]
Funds may be available for students and faculty members of
Consortium institutions to
travel to the Newberry to attend Consortium seminars. For more information,
please contact the Center.
All students must register for this course. To register, please call the Center for Renaissance Studies at 312-255-3514 or email renaissance@newberry.org