Università Roma Tre

Old English Poetry: the holy heroes
The course will focus on the analysis of some Old English poems with particular attention to the hagiographic poems Andreas, Guthlac, Juliana, Judith. By adapting the stylistic features of heroic poetry to the Christian subject, the Anglo-Saxon poets, in adherence to doctrine, perform a refined semantic and conceptual transposition and propose holy men and women who heroically defend and spread their faith.
The poems will be analyzed and critically discussed from a literary, linguistic and philological perspective, taking into account the peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon production and the influences derived from the Continent. Particular attention will be paid to stylistic and morphosyntactic features, vocabulary, as well as to the ways in which Anglo-Saxon poets.

History of Old English Literature.
One of the following texts:
- M. Battaglia (ed.), Le civiltà letterarie del Medioevo germanico, Carocci, Roma 2017 (pp. 137-276).
- B. Murdoch - M. Read (edd.), Early Germanic Literature and Culture, Camden House, Rochester-New York 2004 (pp. 205-233).
- M. Amodio, The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA 2014.

Textual criticism
A.M. Luiselli Fadda, Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel Medioevo germanico, Laterza, Bari-Roma 2010 (Parte I).

Old English Grammars
One of the following texts:
B. Mitchell - F. C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, Blackwell, Oxford 2008.
R. Lass, Old English: a Historical Linguistic Companion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993. G. Mazzuoli Porru, Manuale di inglese antico, Giardini, Pisa 1992.
J. Wright, Old English Grammar. London: Oxford University Press, 1984 (3rd ed.)

Additional material (critical essays etc.) will be provided during the course.