Landscape of Words: Place, Migration and Movement in Medieval Ireland, Britain and Iceland

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The medieval literatures of the North Atlantic -- Medieval Irish, Icelandic, English and Welsh literature (Latin and vernacular) -- feature a high concentration of sophisticated narratives invested in mapping the North Atlantic zone, and the movement, migration, and transformation of people as they move through these landscapes and seascapes. All unified by their conscientious use of a poetics of place, the texts we will examine variously focus on the movement of men and women, migrants and settlers, heroes, saints and colonizers through challenging and transformative geographies; some tales probe both individual and community reactions to being shepherded to or driven from the places, both mundane and otherworldly, they would like to call home; bountiful hunts and harvests demonstrate the happy union of a people with an intended homeland; these lands also show agency by catching fire or flooding in furious protest of a leader's bad judgments or wholesale rejection of an invader. Rooted in the physical geographies of Ireland, Iceland, England and Wales, these narrative topographies move beyond the land itself and become powerful, portable worlds that can be accessed and occupied by readers anywhere and at any time. All readings will be in English translation -- no previous linguistic knowledge is assumed. Primary texts may include: Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica; various saints' lives; Irish immrama or voyage tales; Old English poetry; Irish texts including T'in B' Cuailnge ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"); Mesca Ulad ("Drunkenness of the Ulstermen"); Togail Bruidne Da Derga ("Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel"); Acallam na Senorach ("Colloquy of the Ancients"); Dindshenchas or "lore of high places" poetry; the Welsh Mabinogi; topographical writings on Ireland and Wales by Gerald of Wales; and Old Norse-Icelandic poetry and sagas about voyaging, settlement and "land-taking." We will also examine some contemporary environmental writing and placelore, including novels (The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth, and City of Bohane, Kevin Barry) and perhaps film to compare how and why medieval and modern authors create and deploy narrative topographies (and how audience members respond to them). Critical readings will be wide-ranging and will include material from anthropologists, environmentalists, geographers, literary and cultural studies theorists, and numerous medievalists.