Time Travel: Oxford 1027 and Beyond

4–5 credits · Undergraduate

A thousand years ago, in 1027, the frontier-town of Oxford was still reeling from thentraumatic English massacre of Vikings and their families on St Brice's Day in 1002. The effort to demonstrate Saxon superiority backfired, and within fifteen years, England had its first Scandinavian king - Cnut, a powerful, brilliant and brutal king. What evidence exists for his reign and the importance of Oxford and surrounding shires in his new England? What kind of world did people live in through the last thousand years and what traces of their worlds survive archaeologically; architecturally; in the landscape, placenames; in English language; and in literary imaginaries of that past, like various video games, Narnia, Hogwarts, and Tolkien's Middle-Earth? This course will take students through a thousand years of British history and literature, centering on Oxford - the "city of dreaming spires" - and its local area. We'll focus on objects, buildings, language, legends, and literary greats to reconstruct and understand key moments in the city's emergence as a principal place of intellectual excellence and innovation in Europe. Fieldtrips will include explorations of the city itself and its extant medieval fabric; London's British Museum and Tower of London; and parts of the ancient route - The Ridgeway. We shall have exclusive access to several original manuscripts of the world's greatest literary creations; to some of the most remarkable archives to survive in situ; to Oxford University Press; and to hidden parts of Oxford where the medieval springs into life before our eyes.