Anglo-Saxon England

4 credits · Undergraduate

The five centuries of the Anglo-Saxon period encompass a remarkably diverse range of literature: heroic epics and lyric laments; riddles, recipes, and magic spells; matter-of-fact accounts of monsters and miracles; and histories that set new standards for scholarship. This course surveys Anglo-Saxon literature in modern translation, encompassing texts originally written in both Old English and Latin, and prose as well as verse. At the heart of the semester is Beowulf, the period's great and enigmatic epic.