Module description
Students must have taken module 5AAEB005 Cultural Encounters: Literature and Language in the Anglo Saxon Period to take this module.
This module offers an opportunity to study in detail the best-known long poem of the Anglo-Saxon period, Beowulf, from the perspective of its manuscript, editions, translations, language and poetry. Using the title of 'heroes and other monsters' as a rough guide, we will examine the ways in which the poem anticipates and manipulates key critical concepts such as place, time, gender, violence and memory. Beowulf has long attracted poet-translators, of which that by Seamus Heaney is merely one of the most recent and best known example. It has also provoked the contempt of Woody Allen, has inspired lurid comic books, several arguably very bad films, and a fair amount of critical piety. Along the way, it has also generated (and continues to generate) some more sober (but no less interesting) literary criticism. These topics will form the basis of our critical investigation into the poem.
Assessment details
Coursework/practical: 1 x translation exercise (25%); 1 x 2500 word essay (75%)
Teaching pattern
1 x 2 hour seminar per week