ENGL 514

Spring 2016 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Jan 19-May 4

Seminar in Medieval Literature

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Credit: 4 hours.

Intensive study of selected texts, genres, themes, or theoretical issues in medieval British literature (usually focusing on either Old English or Middle English texts), or of scholarly methods in medieval studies (such as editing, paleography, or bibliography and methods of historical research).

Same as MDVL 514. May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to an aspect of medieval studies or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 514 class schedule data for spring 2016
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	39309	Lecture-Discussion	G	3:00PM -4:50PM	M	English Building	Wright, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/19/16-05/04/16 Section Title: The Exeter Book Section Info: Topic Section G: The World of the Exeter Book The course will involve close reading of texts from the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. The primary goal is to read as much as possible of the Exeter Book in Old English, with the rest in translation. A major focus throughout will be on how the Exeter Book as an anthology functions as a discursive and meditative world map for its readers. Two worlds are regularly distinguished by the deictic demonstrative pronouns “this” (proximal) and “that” (distal): from the perspective of the reader, “this creation” (gesceaft) is the present world (middangeard), while “that creation” is the “other” or “next” world of heaven and hell. This world has objectively defined centers (Jerusalem, Rome) that are subjectively remote and peripheral for a reader situated in Exeter (or Urbana) but that can be experienced and inhabited imaginatively, as can the celestial and infernal poles of that world. The Exeter Book conducts its readers on a tour of both worlds, dramatizing how the material and spiritual worlds intersect: how Christ transcends their boundaries, and how angels and saints and demons and sinners move through them together. At the same time, the Exeter Book is a discursive and meditative encyclopedia of the human social world (familial, ethnic, and national, secular and spiritual) and of the world of non-human creatures and things (“a large book about all sorts of things,” as it is vaguely but quite accurately described in Leofric’s bequest of his library to Exeter Cathedral). We will be reading the Exeter Book, then, as “global” anthology from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. Course requirements include a seminar paper and regular contributions to a collaborative taxonomy of the places, beings, and things in the world according to the Exeter Book. TEXTS: The Exeter Book, ed. G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York, 1936); Anglo-Saxon Poetry, trans. S. A. J Bradley (New York, 1982); J. R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed. by H. D. Meritt (1960; repr. Toronto, 1984) Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.