A study of the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon English (c. 450-1066 AD) in a series of graduated grammar lessons and selections of Old English poetry and prose, including the Old English Translations of the Bible and of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "The Wanderer," "The Dream of the Rood," and "The Wife's Lament."  We will also learn the Old English futhark as it was preserved in "The Rune Poem" and in various runic inscriptions.  There will be some attention to the principles of language change and the subsequent history of the English language, but the main purpose of the course is to instill a comfortable reading fluency in the West Saxon dialect of Old English, both in terms of oral pronunciation and in terms of sensitive comprehension.  You will be able to read Old English by the end of this course.

Requirements: daily grammar review, oral reading and oral translation in class; grammar and translation quizzes, both oral and written; final translation project.

Text:  Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd ed. by Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971).

Old English can be continued second semester in English 211: Beowulf, a reading of Anglo-Saxon England's most powerful and significant poem.  Together, both semesters satisfy the foreign language requirement of Latin Honors.