Studying at York
Voicings & Revoicings: Old English Poetry & its Modern Afterlives - MST00082M
- Department: Centre for Medieval Studies
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
Module summary
Old English poetry (the vernacular poetry of early medieval England) often played with voice and its possibilities, from the speaking objects of the Exeter Book riddles to the ambiguous identities of the speakers in the elegies. The relationship explored in these medieval poems between voices and subjectivities, has continued to provide modern writers with innovative ways of reimagining textuality, aurality and materiality in their own work. This module will give you the opportunity to think across medieval and modern poetry, books and artefacts. We will work with medieval poetry, primarily in Old English, and with revoicings of this poetry produced in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. This modern material will include translations and adaptations, as well as more experimental reworkings that encompass performance.
In medieval poetry, voice was both an instrument of worship and an expression of human ingenuity and creativity – language and voice were gifts with which objects, phenomena, and even ghosts from the past might be re-animated and made to speak. We will explore poetry as a crafting of voice, as well as the material traces of that voice as inscribed in manuscripts, metal and stone, and printed on the page. We will also think about the unreadable and the unspeakable: whose voices are preserved in the record and whose are absent? And how have postmedieval poets attended to these absences in their revoicings of medieval texts?
The module will draw upon a range of different critical approaches to this material including debates about orality and literacy, sound and translation studies, as well as postcolonial and queer readings of medieval literature. All texts will be available in translation as well as in the original language, and the module can be taken by students with no prior knowledge of medieval literature or modern poetry.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Spring Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
The aim of the module is to introduce you to a wide range of Old English poetry and postmedieval translations, adaptations and reworkings of these medieval texts. You will also have the opportunity to develop skills in the close-reading of this poetry, along with exploring comparative and cross-temporal approaches to it.
Module learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module, you should be able to:
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Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and engagement with the main features of Old English poetry, and of how modern poets have translated, adapted and reworked this material in their own writing.
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Engage with comparative and interdisciplinary approaches, relevant critical vocabulary and contexts, including critical approaches to medieval literature, Medievalism, translation studies and poetics.
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Demonstrate skills in the close reading of Old English and modern poetry.
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Produce independent arguments and ideas which demonstrate an advanced proficiency in critical thinking, research, and writing skills.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.
Indicative reading
Key texts may include:
Caedmon’s Hymn, Beowulf, the Old English Guthlac Poems, Toni Morrison ‘Grendel and His Mother’
Meghan Purvis’s Beowulf (2013), the Riddles of the Exeter Book
Lynette Roberts’s Gods with Stainless Ears (1951)
The Dream of the Rood, Caroline Bergvall’s Drift (2014)
Miller Oberman The Unstill Ones (2017)
The Old English elegies, and translations of medieval poems by poets who might include Ezra Pound, Seamus Heaney, U. A. Fanthorpe, Norman Nicholson, David Jones, Edwin Morgan, Maureen Duffy, Vahni Capildeo, Bill Manhire and Nancy Campbell.