Anglo-Saxon writers were intensely interested in history, chronology, temporality, and eternity. Bede's influential works in the eighth century on chronology (espousing the B.C. and A.D. mode of dating), on Anglo-Saxon history, and on the Christian allegorization of time were followed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, an achievement in vernacular historical record-keeping unparalleled in Europe at the time. In tenth- and eleventh-century England we find writers such as Ælfric patiently explaining to lay audiences the Christian scheme of Six Ages of history; Wulfstan preaching apocalyptic doom in his rousing political sermon; and the Blickling and Vercelli homilists espousing eschatological themes. The poetry that is recorded in tenth-century manuscripts (such as "The Wanderer," "The Seafarer," "Judgment Day," "The Order of the World") is rich in its representations of apocalyptic themes; of the correspondences between historical ages and the body, the text, and the world; of a heightened sense of national history; and of an eternal realm outside of history.

While exploring the ways that writers of Old English prose and poetry responded to the past and to the age that they believed themselves to inhabit, we will also discuss our contemporary representations of the medieval, focusing on the problems and possibilities of literary history, on the ways in which the study of medieval literature rose to prominence in the nineteenth century as a central subject in the university English curriculum, and on how the medieval is viewed today in both academic and popular culture as "an all-purpose other," according to critic Lee Patterson. One particular focus of our investigations will be contemporary views on fin de siecle and millennial anxiety as a context for the scholarly controversy on the medieval perception of the year 1000.

Longer works, such as Bede's History and the Chronicles, will be read in Modern English translations. At the same time, the seminar will cover the basics of Old English grammar so that you will learn how to read some of the course texts in Old English. Previous knowledge of Old English is not necessary.