John D. Niles, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Fridays, 2:00-5:00 pm; January 7 - March 11, 2005
The title of this seminar plays on the Latin word inventio, a term whose meaning ranges from "discovery" to "invention." During the first two-thirds of each seminar meeting we will be translating (and to some extent "discovering") Old English texts with precise attention to their grammar, style, lexicon, and thematic content. During the rest of each meeting we will look at rare books in which those texts were first presented to a post-medieval reading public, thereby promoting their discovery by an unintended audience while also inventing them as modern artifacts. Early editions drawn from the Special Collections of the Newberry Library will be compared with current scholarly editions so as to reveal the underlying assumptions on both sides.
Each meeting will be devoted to a different type of text. We will start with prose excerpts from the Old English Gospels, the writings of Aelfric, the Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Old English law codes, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Later we will turn our attention to poetic texts, including selections from the Junius Manuscript, the Exeter Book, and Beowulf, still comparing current editions of those texts with early ones. As time permits, we will take a look at early dictionaries and grammars of Old English. The point of the seminar will be to develop students' reading knowledge of Old English while at the same time sharpening their awareness of the degree to which Old English literature, as it has been presented to the modern reading public, is the creation of successive generations of scholars building on one another's work.
The prerequisite for enrollment is at least one full previous term of Old English. Students who take the course for credit will be expected to write a term paper of a length appropriate to their individual level of training. Everyone enrolled in the seminar will "present" at least one rare book to the group.
Funds are 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.