England in Europe: From Beowulf to the Roman d’Eneas
Course description:
This module looks at the literary culture of England from the late tenth to the late twelfth century; that
is from Anglo-Saxon England to the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’. We will situate the study of secular
literature within the context of the dynamic exchange between the monastic, clerical and lay worlds
which characterized the high medieval period in England. This period was marked by church reform,
conquests (Danish and Norman), and ‘Renaissance’; its literary production was distinctly multilingual
involving a rich interplay of English, Latin, and French, as well as Old Norse. Over the course of the
term, we will consider the relationship between key Anglo-Saxon literary texts and the French and
Latin literature of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman England.
Works to be read may include: Beowulf, The Letter of Alexander, The Exeter Book, Apollonius of Tyre,
The Encomium Emmae Reginae, The Life of King Edward, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Song of
Roland, Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, William of Malmesbury’s History of the Kings of England,
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and the Roman d’Eneas.
We will approach these texts by tracing a number of themes, including: the relationship between epic,
romance and history-writing; the idea of ‘fiction’; the literary, political and religious consequences of
England’s radical use of the written vernacular (including the emergence of French as a written
language); competing English, Welsh, Danish and Norman origin legends; female literary patronage;
court and cloister; and England’s place in the emergence of a European literary culture. Throughout we
will be concerned with the ways in which politics from the nineteenth century to the present day have
shaped the study of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman literature.
All texts studied will be available in translation as well as the original, and the module can be taken by
students with no prior knowledge of Old English, Old French or Latin.
Learning outcomes:
 a good knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman literature across English, Latin and French
 an awareness of the cultural contexts of literary production in high medieval England
 an understanding of the politics of the major trends in the literary criticism of the period
Preliminary reading:
Field, Rosalind, ‘Romance in England, 1066-1400' in D. Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature,
1999, pp. 152-76.
Fulk, R.D and Cain, C.M., A History of Old English Literature, 2003. Chapters 8 (‘Wisdom Literature and Lyric Poetry) and
9 (‘Germanic Legend and Heroic Lay’).
Short, I., 'Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England', Anglo-Norman Studies 14 (1992), 229-49.
Tyler, E., ‘From Old English to Old French’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100c.1500, eds Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al, 2009, pp. 164-78.