Anglo-Saxon Course Booklet

ANGLO-‐SAXON LITERATURE

AUTUMN 2011 & SPRING 2012 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE

UNIVERSITY OF YORK DR ELIZABETH TYLER Anglo-‐Saxon Literature

Over the course of the Autumn and Spring Terms, we will alternate literature seminars with translation classes. The literature seminars will be similar to seminars in period and special modules: texts will be discussed from a range of literary, historical and theoretical perspectives but we will attend to texts in their original language, studied alongside additional texts in translation. In the translation classes, we will work on translating set texts, revising grammar and practicing close reading skills. Each week there will be a lecture, workshop or trip. Lectures, seminars and translation classes are all compulsory elements of this module. Anglo-‐Saxon literature covers writing in English and Latin over the 500 years which stretch from the conversion of the Anglo-‐Saxons to Christianity to the wake of the Norman Conquest. We will approach this wide range by tracing a number of themes, including: the place of literary culture in the creation of England; religious and secular origin legends; the literary, political and religious consequences of England’s radical use of the written vernacular; reading texts in their manuscript contexts; the distinctive aesthetics of poetry and prose poised between orality and literacy; the social roles of poetry; England’s role in the emergence of a European literary culture. Assessment: There are two elements, each counting for 50% of the final module mark. (1) a three-‐hour (closed) translation and comment paper in Term 9 (centrally timetabled); (2) a foreign literature essay of 3,000 words to be submitted to the Departmental Office by Monday, Week 5, Term 9. Your seminar performance may contribute to the assessed oral component of your degree. Proceedural Essay: Mid-‐way through the Spring Term, you will have an opportunity to write a procedural essay of up to 2,000 words. This is not compulsory but it is an excellent opportunity to write a draft of your assessed essay and to get feedback on how to write about literature in another language. General Reading: For a survey of Anglo-‐Saxon literature, try: R.D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature (2003). For accessible brief histories of Anglo-‐Saxon England try: Thomas Charles-‐Edwards, After Rome (2003) with Wendy Davies, From the Vikings to the Normans (2003). You will need to purchase a copy of Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3nd edn (2010) – many of the texts for the module will be read from this volume. Please feel free to buy the 2nd edition if it is cheaper and available. The first edition will not have all the texts we are reading. Contacting me: My office is in the King’s Manor (K/275a) but I am also often in L/A105 in Langwith. The best way to reach me is via e-‐mail or to visit during my office hours.

Elizabeth Tyler [email protected] Office: K/275a (in the Centre for 18th-‐Century Studies in the King’s Manor) and L/A105. (32)3915

Teaching Outline Autumn 2011

In addition to these seminars and translation classes, there will also be a weekly lecture. Week 2: Translation Class – Dream of the Rood Week 3: Bede and the Invention of the English Primary Texts: Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People and The Dream of the Rood Week 4: Translation Class – Dream of the Rood Week 5: Alfred the Great – The Power of the Written Word Primary Texts: Preface to the Pastoral Care and Asser, Life of Alfred Week 6: Reading Week Week 7: Translation Class – Judith Week 8: Beowulf – Imagining the Germanic Past Primary Text: Beowulf Week 9: Translation Class – Judith Week 10: Beowulf and its Manuscript – Judith and Alexander the Great Primary Texts: Beowulf, Judith and The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle

Seminar 1 Autumn Week 3 Bede and the Invention of the English In this seminar we are going to focus on two intimately related themes – legends about the origins and conversion of the English. We will approach these through Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. You should read the whole text. In class we will focus on the preface, the arrival of the Anglo-‐Saxons (1.14-‐15), Gregory the Great (2.1) and Caedmon (4.24). The preface, which offers valuable insight into how Bede understood the nature and purpose of history, will be are starting point. We will then consider the relationship between conversion and Englishness by looking at the account of Gregory. In looking at Caedmon’s Hymn, and then The Dream of the Rood, we will consider the place of poetry in the conversion and the conversion of poetry into a tool for conversion. Primary Reading Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The Dream of the Rood, in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3nd edn (2010), pp. 118-‐19. Secondary Reading R. W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Medieval England (1966), chapter 3. Key Texts.

Sarah Larratt Keefer, ‘Old English Religious Poetry’, in David Johnson and Elaine Treharne (eds), Readings in Medieval Texts (2005). Key Texts.

Sandra McEntire, ‘The Devotional Context of the Cross Before AD 1000’, in R.M. Liuzza (ed.), Old English Literature (2002). Key Texts.

Rosemary Woolf, ‘Doctrinal Influences on The Dream of the Rood’, Medium Aevum 27 (1958), 137-‐53; reprinted in her Art and Doctrine: Essays on Medieval Literature (1986). Key Texts.

Seminar 2 Autumn Week 5 Alfred the Great – The Power of the Written Word From the reign of Alfred the Great onwards, the kings of Wessex began to conceive of themselves as having dominion over all of England. While defending Wessex against the Vikings, Alfred also launched an ambitious educational program which radically focussed on writing in English (alongside Latin) and extended to the laity. In this seminar we will look at the political and religious dimension of Alfred’s precocious use of the vernacular written. We will consider the role texts, especially Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, played in shaping the idea of England. At the same time, we will want to be careful not to overemphasize the importance of the written word to Alfred’s kingship.

Primary Reading

Asser’s Life of Alfred (pp. 68-‐110) in Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Distributed in class.

Alfred the Great, ‘Preface from the Translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care’ in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 13-‐17.

Secondary Reading

Howe, N. ‘Cultural Construction of Reading in Anglo-‐Saxon England’. In Jonathan Boyarin, ed. The Ethnography of Reading. 1993 and in Roy Liuzza, ed. Old English Critical Essays. 2002. Both on Key Texts. Kelly, Susan. ‘Anglo-‐Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word.’ in Rosamund McKitterick, ed. The Uses of Literacy in the Early Medieval World. 1990 and in Roy Liuzza, ed. Old English Critical Essays. 2002. Key Texts. Lerer, Seth. Literacy and Power in Anglo-‐Saxon Literature. Nebraska, 1991. Chapter 2. Key Texts. Wormald, Patrick. ‘Engla Lond: the Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (1994), 1-‐24.

Seminar 3 Autumn Week 8 Beowulf – Imaging the Germanic World The action of Beowulf is set in sixth-‐century Scandinavia. It shares with other heroic poetry a fascination with Germanic peoples of the Continent in the Age of Migration. In this seminar, we will consider central themes in the poem – including what makes a good hero and what makes a good king, the role of treasure, the poet’s attitude towards paganism and what the poem achieves by setting its action both long ago and far away. Although set in the sixth century, the poems manuscript dates from around 1000 AD and we will want to consider both the vexed question of the date of the poem’s composition and why audiences continued to be interested in the poem through to the early eleventh century. In so doing, we will consider what kind of social and political work the poem did, both in early and late Anglo-‐Saxon England. Primary Reading Beowulf (Please make sure you bring the text in Old English and in translation to class). Editions: Robert Fulk, Robert Bjork, John Niles, (eds.) Klaeber’s Beowulf (2008) [The standard edition]. George Jack (ed.), Beowulf: A Student Edition (1994) [Helpful marginal glosses.] Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson (eds.), Beowulf: An Edition (1998) [User-‐friendly, with a good glossary.] Michael Swanton (ed.), Beowulf (1978) [Parallel text and translation.] Some recommended translations: Kevin Crossley-‐Holland (trans.), Beowulf (1999) [With a good introduction.] R.D. Fulk (trans.), Beowulf-‐Manuscript (2010). R.M. Liuzza (trans.), Beowulf (2000) [By an eminent OE scholar, and with an excellent introduction and appendices. Highly recommended.] Secondary Reading The bibliography on Beowulf is enormous. I have selected articles here specifically related to the topic of today’s seminar. Frank, Roberta, ‘Germanic Legend in Old English Literature’ in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, eds. M. Godden and M. Lapidge. 1991. Key Texts. Greenfield, S.B. and David Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (1986). Chapter 6, ‘Secular Heroic Poetry’. Key Texts.

John D. Niles, ‘Locating Beowulf in Literary History’ in his Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts (2007), pp. 13-‐58. C. Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede, ‘Beowulf’ and the Conversion of the Anglo-‐Saxon Aristocracy’. In Bede and Anglo-‐Saxon England, ed. R.T. Farrell. British Archaeological Reports , British Series 46, 1978, pp. 32-‐95. Key Texts.

Seminar 4 Autumn Week 10 Beowulf and its Manuscript – Judith and Alexander the Great Beowulf is accompanied in its manuscript context by The Passion of St Christopher, The Wonders of the East, The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and Judith. The manuscript thus combines material in verse and prose, brings together religious and secular texts and juxtaposes several different pasts (the pagan Antiquity, Old Testament, Christian and Germanic). In this seminar, we will focus on what insights can be gained into the interpretation of Beowulf from reading it in its manuscript context. In class, we will focus on reading Beowulf alongside Judith and The Letter of Alexander. Key questions will include: The Beowulf manuscript has been described as a book about monsters – is this adequate? What insight does Alexander provide into how to read the figure of Beowulf? What insight does Judith provide? We will return to some of the questions we asked last week from a new different perspective. What social and political interventions did the texts of the Beowulf manuscript make – at time of composition, at time of copying? What does the manuscript suggest about the nature of heroism, about attitudes towards pagans? Primary Reading Beowulf (see Seminar 3) Judith in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 224-‐41. The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle in A. Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript (1995), pp. 225-‐53. Old English with facing page translation. Distributed in class. The Old English Orosius. Material on Alexander the Great. The Life of Alfred the Great, translated from the German of Dr. R. Pauli to which is Appended Alfred’s Anglo-‐Saxon Version of Orosius, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (1857), pp. 337-‐63. Distributed in class. [All the texts from the Beowulf-‐manuscript have recently been edited and translated in: The Beowulf-‐Manuscript, ed. R.D. Fulk (2010).] Secondary Reading Revisit what you read for Seminar 2. Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-‐Manuscript. (1995). Chapters 1, 2 and 5, pp. 1-‐57 and 116-‐39. Key Texts.

Teaching Outline Spring 2012

NB The content of the seminars and translation classes is fixed. Reading week may move.

In addition to these seminars and translation classes, there will also be a weekly lecture. Spring 2010 Week 2: The Exeter Book Primary Texts: The Wanderer, The Wife’s Lament and other Poems Week 3: Translation Class – Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi (1-‐23) Week 4: Poetry and Politics Primary Texts: The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon Week 5: Translation Class – Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi (24-‐46) Week 6: Reading Week Week 7: Ælfric – Using English for the Sacred Primary Texts: Preface to Genesis, Life of Æthelthryth and other selections Week 8: Translation Class – Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi (47-‐71) Week 9: The Bishop and the Romance – Readings from Corpus Christi College 201 Primary Texts: Apollonius of Tyre and the Sermo Lupi Week 10: Translation Class -‐ Revision

Seminar 5 Spring Week 2 Multiple Voices of and in The Exeter Book: The Wanderer and The Wife’s Lament In this seminar we will look at the polyphony – the multiple voices – of Old English elegiac poetry by looking at The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Precepts, Deor and The Wife’s Lament – all poems found within the Exeter Book manuscript. Our focus will lie with The Wanderer and The Wife’s Lament which you should be prepared to discuss in the original Old English, while The Seafarer, Deor and Precepts can be read in translation, alongside Blickling Homily 10. Issues to consider include: manuscript context of the Exeter Book; the role and persona of the speaker(s); ideas of transience and mutability; exile, pilgrimage and loneliness; recurrent motifs and imagery; Germanic voices; Christian voices and degree of Christian argument; women’s voices; the style and structure of The Wanderer. Primary Reading

‘Precepts’ in Poems of Wisdom and Learning, ed. T.A. Shippey (1976), pp. 48-‐53. Distributed in class. ‘Deor’ in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 70-‐75. ‘The Seafarer’, in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 60-‐67. ‘The Wanderer’, in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 54-‐61. ‘The Wife’s Lament’ in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 86-‐90. Blickling X, in The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris. EETS OS 58, 63 and 73 (1874-‐80), pp. 107-‐15. Distributed in class.

Secondary Reading Make sure that you read: Fell, Pasternack, Scragg and at least one of Bellanoff, Ingham or Klein. Dunning is very useful – though not exciting! Belanoff, Patricia, ‘Women’s Song, Women’s Language: Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife’s Lament’, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. by Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (1990), pp. 193-‐203. Key Texts. Dunning, T.P. and A.J. Bliss, eds, The Wanderer, 1969. Contains a useful discussion of the diction, style and structure of the poem in sections: III (pp.36-‐74) and V (pp.78-‐94). Key Texts. Fell, Christine, ‘Perceptions of Transience’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (1991), pp. 172-‐89. Key Texts.

Ingham, Patrica Claire, ‘From Kinship to Kingship: Mourning, Gender and Anglo-‐Saxon Community’, in Grief and Gender: 700-‐1700 (2003), pp. 17-‐31. Key Texts. Klein, Stacy, ‘Gender and the Nature of Exile in Old English Elegies’, in A Place to Believe in: Locating Medieval Landscapes, ed. by Clare Lees and Gillian Overing, pp. 113-‐31. Key Texts. Pasternack, Carol Braun, The Textuality of Old English Poetry (1995). Chapter 2 ‘The Polyphony of the Wanderer’. Key Texts. Scragg, Donald, ‘The Exeter Book’ in The Blackwell Encylopaedia of Anglo-‐Saxon England, ed. by John Blair, et al. (1999). Reference copies in the JBM and Raymond Burton.

Seminar 6 Spring Week 4 Poetry and Politics in Late Anglo-‐Saxon England The Anglo-‐Saxons appear not to have cultivated poetry about contemporary kings and leaders until the tenth century. In this seminar we will look at two poems – The Battle of Brunanburh (commemorating an English victory in 937) and The Battle of Maldon (commemorating an English defeat in 991). In reading these poems, we will want to ask what ideological work heroic poetry was doing in late Anglo-‐Saxon England? What was the impetus for the composition of heroic verse about the present in Late Anglo-‐Saxon England? How do these poems relate to Beowulf, The Wanderer and Judith? How do Brunanburh and Maldon bring the past – by using a traditional verse form and mode – to bear on the present? Are the poems concerned with social hierarchy? How are the Vikings and the English represented? Primary

Battle of Maldon in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 155-‐69. Distributed in class. Battle of Brunnanburh in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 42-‐47. Distributed in class. Secondary Pauline Stafford Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. 1989, pp. 24-‐68. Key Texts. Niles, John D. ‘Maldon and Mythopoesis’ in his Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts (2007), 203-‐36. Key Texts. O’Keeffe, Katherine O’Brien, ‘Heroic Values and Christian Ethics’ in Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (1991), pp. 107-‐25. Key Texts. Thorman, Janet, ‘The Anglo-‐Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’ in Anglo-‐Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity. Eds A.J. Frantzen and J.D. Niles. 1997. Key Texts Townend, Matthew, ‘Pre-‐Cnut Praise-‐Poetry in Viking Age England’. Review of English Studies (51), 349-‐370. On-‐line.

Seminar 7 Spring Week 7 Ælfric – Using English for the Sacred In today’s seminar we will look at the work of Ælfric, a second generation Benedictine reformer, who wrote numerous homilies, saints lives and participated in the translation of the Bible into English. Biblical translation was a radical move – not to be paralleled again until the late fourteenth century when it was considered heretical – and unparalleled on the Latin West. Ælfric claims that he translated the Bible, reluctantly, at the insistence of his lay patrons the Ealdorman Æthelweard (a man who was himself educated in Latin) and Sigeweard. He was highly articulate about what he saw as the dangers of allowing the laity to approach the bible – and other religious learning – without clerical guidance. Among other concerns of the Benedictine Reform was the extension of monastic values about celibacy to the clergy as a whole (many of whom were married in this period) and to the laity (in the form of sexual continence). The Benedictine Reform, with King Edgar, as its patron was also closely connected with the emergence of a united English kingdom in the late tenth century: with the king responsible for the spiritual health of his kingdom and the increasing influence of Christian teaching on the developing institution of kingship. Some questions to consider include: What were Ælfric’s specific concerns about translating the Bible? What is his attitude towards use of English in other religious contexts – saints lives? What does Ælfric say in his Latin prefaces and in his English prefaces? Does he use these languages differently? How does Ealdorman Æthelweard’s active patronage of Ælfric’s translations complicate our understanding of the power dynamic between the clergy and the laity? What do we learn from looking at Ælfric through the lens of later medieval biblical translation? What theological and intellectual questions is Ælfric forced to confront when he uses English? Are there political dimensions to his use of English? How do his concerns with sexual continence and political stability shape his writing? Primary

Ælfric, Preface to Genesis. Old English from Wilcox, Jonanthan. Ælfric’s Prefaces (1994), pp. 116-‐9. In Old English with modern translation. Distributed in class. Prefaces and The Life of St Æthelthryth in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W.W. Skeat, EETS 94 and 114 (1890 and 1900), I, 4-‐7 and 432-‐41 II. Distributed in class. Secondary Catherine Cubitt, ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’ in The Companion to Ælfric, ed. Mary Swan and Hugh Magennis (2009), pp. 165-‐92. Key Texts. Catherine Cubitt, 'Review article : The Tenth-‐century Benedictine Reform in England', Early Medieval Europe, 6 (1997), 77-‐94. On-‐line. R.D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature (2003), pp. 92-‐7. Key Texts. Malcolm Godden, Ælfric, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. www.oxforddnb.com.

David Lawton, ‘Englishing the Bible, 1066-‐1549’ in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. D. Wallace (1999), pp. 454-‐82. Key Texts.

Seminar 8 Spring Week 9 The Bishop and the Romance – Readings from Corpus Christi College 201

In this seminar we will look at selections from a set of texts associated with Archbishop Wulfstan of York and copied in part 1 of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 201. Wulfstan was a monk, bishop and statesman across the reigns of the English king Æthelred and the Danish king Cnut. We will look at his Sermo Lupi – preached during periods of Viking invasion. We will also consider the Old English Apollonius of Tyre and The Institutes of Polity (a treatise by Wulfstan on the right ordering of society). Apollonius is the first vernacular version of a romance that would become popular in continental vernaculars later in the Middle Ages. The manuscript also contains, amongst other texts, law codes written for both Æthelred and Cnut and religious poetry. Some questions to consider include: What does this manuscript tell us about the uses of the vernacular in England, both before and after the Danish Conquest? How does the emergence of vernacular romance in pre-‐Conquest England and its juxtaposition with the Sermo Lupi and Old English poetry challenge our understanding of late Anglo-‐Saxon literary culture? What was Apollonius doing in CCC 201? In what ways do the texts of this manuscript engage with the maintaining social order and what was social order?

Primary Wulfstan. Sermo Lupi in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 259-‐67. Wulfstan. Institutes of Polity in Anglo-‐Saxon Prose, ed. Michael Swanton (1975), pp. 125-‐138. Distributed in class. Apollonius of Tyre in Old and Middle English: c.890-‐c.1400, ed. Elaine Treharne, 3rd edn (2010), pp. 275-‐99.

Secondary Archibald, Elizabeth. ‘Apollonius of Tyre in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’. In Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context. Ed. Heinz Hoffman. London, 1999. 229-‐37. Key Texts. Cowen, Alice. ‘Byrstas and Bysmeras: The Wounds of Sin in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos’ in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (2004), pp. 397-‐411. Key Texts. Heyworth, Melanie. ‘Apollonius of Tyre in Its Manuscript Context: An Issue of Marriage’, Philological Quarterly (2007) 86: 1-‐26. On-‐line. Wormald, Patrick. ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’. In his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West. London, 1999. 225-‐251. Key Texts.

Anglo-Saxon Course Booklet

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