module choice next year (old english?)

basically, i'm leaning towards taking old english next year as a module; the other choices are something like the european novel, the carribean novel (?!) or other things which aren't interesting enough to remember.

i've never done old english before (well, have looked at poems but never studied large chunks of it for long periods), let alone a great deal of middle english. i've never studied any german but i'm slightly linguistic (a level french and latin, though the latter might not help at all). is it as bad as they make it sound?

Reply 1

epitome

silence

The Latin A Level certainly isn't useless. Though not as uber-helpful as German when it comes to vocabulary issues, it stands you in very good stead for studying the grammar (depending on the literature vs. language balance of the course, knowledge of grammatical constructs will be more or less useful).

We don't know enough about Old English to be able to come up with entirely authoritative translations (unlike, e.g., French), but this means that much of OE study is to do with problems in translation/general themes etc. Middle English doesn't really help an awful lot (though obviously there *are* continuities/near-continuities), so you're not particularly disadvantaged there.

is it as bad as they make it sound?

It depends how bad 'they' are making it sound! Also, what texts you will have to study, in what depth, and the nature of the questions you will have to answer/topic you'll have to write on...
I really love doing OE: it's refreshing to have something like translation to do, amidst all the usual Englishy essays (a bit more 'mathematical', I suppose)and there's some really good literature out there. Saying that, ALL of our Anglo-Saxon literature is contained in just a few books (four, I think), and that is all we have! This means that, in translation, you can read our entire Anglo-Saxon literary heritage in just a few days. Sorted. :smile:

It's very much a personal decision, and some people really wouldn't/don't enjoy studying it. There are great benefits, though (although admittedly not in practical terms...there aren't all that many Anglo-Saxons around to practice our language skills on nowadays...), not least the fact that OE is just great fun. In my opinion. :biggrin:

Good luck deciding!

Reply 2

Tyler Durden

The study of Old English is an example of literature departments scraping the academic barrel and coming up with something which is deemed worthy of study largely thanks to its chronological location at the start of what has become a great tradition - namely literature in English. In my opinion there are very few OE texts which have much inherent merit or are worthy of the title "classic." Beowulf for instance is a relatively interesting story - and an interesting insight into the fusion of the Christian and Heroic codes, but I feel it lacks the literary merit or beauty of pretty much every other text I've studied. In fact the only Anglo-Saxon poem I genuinely love is The Dream of the Rood which is beautiful (but in a minority!)

I reckon you'd be better off doing the European novel which sounds infinitely more interesting! Obviously it's down to personal opinion and perhaps I've been a little harsh, but that's pretty much how I see it.

What kind of European novels would you look at do you know?

Reply 3

epitome

Hmmm...I know where you're coming from. But it's important to remember that the OE stuff we study certainly was not written to be read in anywhere near the same way as more modern texts (and y 'modern' I don't mean just post-Victorian). If you're interested in the oral/aural tradition and its merging/developing into the written, OE is a great place to start. (Not intended to be patronising, by the say! :smile:

)

The texts, naturally, don't stand such close scrutiny as later material - it simply isn't so precise, or 'reader-based'; so yes, it's going to lack "literary merit". But if you're intersted in history/effect of context (stupid phrase, that: apologies!), it's great stuff. The connections with other literature ('literature' in a more real sense), such as the Icelandic sagas.

This, "silence", is why it's a matter of opinion! :biggrin:

Reply 4

silence

i've been doing a compulsory european lit module this year; involved dante, spanish golden age, les liasons dangereuses and some thomas mann. dante was more my scene and the rest was ok. i think the european stuff next year contains things like kafka... although it would be studied in translation obviously, i'm just a tiny bit unsure about it.

i enjoy getting close up and intimate with texts so to speak, whether it's translation, grammatical analysis (although there are obviously overlaps).. so i'm leaning more towards old english. i'm not sure if you've heard of him, but adam thirlwell (twenty something year old novelist) went to my school; when i was reading through these profiles that ex-pupils fill in about how they're finding their course, he said that studying old english was "upsetting". this left a long lasting doubt in my mind about the subject. but i think i'll end up going for it!

Reply 5

sophieD

i was thinking of choosing late medieval literature @ york...it'll be a challenge but i want to do something more varied, as too many of my modules are 20th century.

englishstudent...what modules have you chosen for your course @ york? I was thinking of choosing 'Madness Folly and Nonsense' for term 6...it looked quite interesting!

Reply 6

epitome

i enjoy getting close up and intimate with texts so to speak, whether it's translation, grammatical analysis (although there are obviously overlaps).. so i'm leaning more towards old english.

The only thing I'd want to make you aware of is that the OE texts are far less *deliberate* in their particular use of language, etc. (posibly/probably), due to their distinctly oral/aural heritage.
So if by "getting up close" you mean really getting into the clevernessess of the texts, and the 'author's intentions', OE might not be the right choice. For a start, we haven't a damn clue who wrote the vast majority of the stuff, or even what century they were living in. It's unplaceable, and we'll probably never know. So, whereas in a more contextualised text we'd be able to comment fairly surely on 'intention'/reception/irony/blah blah blah, we just can't do that with the OE material.
This is good if you like to put your own ideas on stuff, but not if you want *answers*!

In terms of translation, as I wrote earlier, there's no authoritative version of any of it - we just don't know enough. So depending how interested you get in the translation, you can come up with really great, original things. (I, sadly, am not that great!)

It's worth giving it a try just for the challenge, and the fact that it's completely different to the rest of everything in English! Go for it! :biggrin:

Reply 7

Tyler Durden

sophieD

It does look pretty cool, but I've gone for Elizabethan Love Poetry and Imagined Worlds (both Renaissance ones). If I don't get Imagined Worlds (which looks amazingly broad) then it'll be Editing and Unediting the Renaissance. That looks interesting if somewhat technical, but I really liked the lecture Bill Sherman gave so I thought I'd go for it anyway. Term 6 I think I'll do Homer. What are you doing next term? And for your later modules?

Reply 8

silence

those york modules look cool! doing homer as part of an english course would be great; at bham there's a compulsory module outside the main department in the first year - i chose ancient greece and rome but it's a module from the actual ancient history course. there were a few weeks of homer, but the rest of it's been all historical which, although interesting, is quite difficult to get into (or rather it's difficult to get out of the literary frame of mind).

Reply 9

rottcodd

englishstudent

In fact the only Anglo-Saxon poem I genuinely love is The Dream of the Rood which is beautiful

The Dream of the Rood is the best thing to come out of the anglo-saxon period.

Reply 10

Da Bachtopus

Reminds me of a discussion that sprang up here:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=186474&page=2

Old English would be an interesting little avenue to explore - I don't think it's worthless, and I'd like to learn it at some point - but I think the European Novel would be a far more enriching paper to take.

Reply 11

sophieD

englishstudent

i so wanted to to the renassiance and restoration module, but they wouldn't let me change...so next term im doing the Romantics (i've just got the reading list, so they'll be stuff like mansfield park, ivanhoe, blake's songs of innocence and experience and some byron). For term 4 its either gonna be late medieval or british and irish 1910-present. Then ill hopefully do madness folly and nonsense, and after that, its writing and performance modules, i think i chose shakespeare in performance and stanislavski to the present day! i thought that the editing and unediting the renaissance looked really interesting though. We looked briefly at that last term, i think its fascinating!

Reply 12

symun

Dream of the Rood si teh roxor.

Old English is very enjoyable, and a nice break from pretentious literary criticism - a little more language based and more objective in a way.

Plus, you'll always be in the minority in your Uni, even your Year, studying it. I think 9 people did in my year.