Proseminar: Old English Prose
Fr. 11.00-13.00
Geb. 23.21 Raum U1.68                                                         Beginn: 17.10.2003
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No other early European literature offers such a rich amount of prose texts in the vernacular as the Old English. The Anglo-Saxon prose writers produced literary texts covering a wide range of topics and text forms. Translations from Latin texts, chronicles, collections of sermons and homilies, saints’ lives, laws, charters, writs, letters, and much more has come down to us. Many texts are anonymous but for an astoundingly great number we can even attribute the authors name with certainty. Ælfric and Wulfstan are without doubt the two most prolific and well-known late Anglo-Saxon prose writers.

Therefore, we will read and discuss one representative work of each of these two authors in the first units of our seminar:

· Wulfstan Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Wulfstan’s Address to the English)

· Ælfric The Life of King Oswald

Then we will enlarge our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon prose by reading and discussing excerpts from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some Laws and Charters, and various other short texts.

Each of the various text forms requires a different approach so that we will practise intrinsic methods and functional methods at the same time. Of course, a thorough understanding of the texts on the literal level is a conditio sine qua no. All the texts offer a rich variety of historical perspectives which makes a sound knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history a necessary requirement for their interpretation. Basically this reflects the plan of the seminar. Each text will be approached in a three step procedure: textual understanding - intrinsic analysis - historical embedding, although the accent may be put differently.

The basic texts read in the seminar are edited in:

Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse, rev. by Dorothy Whitelock. Oxford 1967. (or any other edition)

Recommended reading:

The Anglo-Saxons, ed. by James Campbell. Oxford 1982.

W. L. Renwick and Harold Orton. The Beginnings of English Literature to Skelton 1509. 3rd ed., London  1966:229-269.

You can put your name down on the list of participants by contacting
holteir@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de

Moreover, all students will be invited to the BSCW-Server
bscw.uni-duesseldorf.de ____________________________________________________________________

Voraussetzungen: Introduction to English Medieval Studies -
                           Part I: General und Part II: Old English
Leistungsnachweis: Abschlussprüfung (mündlich), Referat oder Hausarbeit
Veranstaltungstyp: Wahlpflicht M.A./Prom.; SII: B1,2.

Der Inhalt der Lehrveranstaltung ist geeignet für die Zwischenprüfung

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©  Rainer Holtei
last updated
20.09.2009

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