What did it mean, in the heroic Germanic imaginaire of Pre-Conquest England and Scandinavia, to be a hero, and to be a woman? Could one be such a thing?
This seminar has a two-fold aim: first, to attempt to establish a definition of what it means to be heroic in Old English literature, and how genre, gender, and Christianity impact (or not!) this representation. For this, we will review some of the most popular and often-cited heroic texts of the period.
Second, we will focus on three main figures/texts, which we are going to study more closely: Cynewulf's Elene, the Old English poetic Judith, and Grendel's mother in Beowulf.
This class is intended to broaden students' horizons by introducing them to a number of little-known texts from the Old English corpus.
We will be working with the texts and translations, but we will try to devote some 15 minutes in every class to look at and translate parts of our texts that is of particular interest to our study
- Docente: Juliette Vuille