Course info

Calls to 'decolonise the curriculum' (terminology which has itself been critiqued by scholars of indigeneity, as will be discussed) present particular problems when we are dealing with pre-modern European literary cultures. How can we diversify our syllabus when we often do not know the names of our authors, let alone how they might have described their ethnic identities, or even if they were men or women? This module will address that issue head-on, examining a range of Old English poems and prose works in dual-text Old/Modern English versions alongside a selection of modern creative responses by writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries in order to interrogate how early English literature has sometimes been used, both within and since the medieval period, to buttress ideological assumptions that are imperialist and patriarchal, and what we can do to reframe the way we teach and study Old English in response. Extracts from landmark texts from postcolonial and feminist literary theory will be set each week, as well as secondary literature from Old English Studies, so that students will become confident in reading Old English from theoretically informed perspectives, as well as considering issues that can be answered with more traditional, materialist and positivist research, such as the historical evidence for women authorship in the early medieval period, and for ethnic diversity among medieval European populations.