Prof. Richard F. Johnson
Studies in Early English Poetry

This course will provide the student with a solid foundation in the earliest "English" poetry and its cultural and historical significance for the development of later English poetry. The course will focus primarily on the intrinsic energy and elegance of the Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus, but will also examine such issues as the cultural context of composition and performance in early medieval England, and the influence of Anglo-Latin learning and continental manuscript culture on the production of Old English poetry.

Texts may include:

• Michael Alexander, The Earliest English Poems (U of Calif Press, 1970).
• S.A.J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry (Dent, 1982).
• E. Talbot Donaldson, Beowulf (Norton, 1966).

Selected Readings from:

• Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1991).
• Jeff Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry (Yale UP, 1980).
• Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (Routledge, 1982).
• Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986).
• John Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel (Boydell, 1989).

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