ENG 3700 - Old and Middle English Literature

This course surveys, in greater detail, the richness of English literary production during the medieval period. It begins with Anglo-Saxon efforts to codify their language and to adapt oral-formulaic storytelling into written forms; students will read from the works of anonymous authors, like the unnamed Beowulf-poet, and from celebrated Old English writers, like Cædmon, Cynewulf, and Alfred the Great. The course will also consider how the decisive Norman Conquest of 1066 forever altered the fabric of the English language to produce a distinctive Middle English. Among the numerous authors in Middle English, students will be introduced to luminaries like Layamon, the Gawain-poet, William Langland, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, John Skelton, Robert Henryson, and others.

Credit Hours: 3

Term Offered: Fall of even years

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