Anotace
The seminar focuses on the analysis of selected Old English epic texts. Focusing first on secular texts, it compares their approach to the subject matter and the attitudes they represent, and examines the extent to which the presumed living tradition of heroic poetry as the original basis of Old English epic can be reconstructed from the limited and heterogeneous surviving material, both in terms of subject matter and form. The analysis of religious epic focuses on the ways in which it relates to the models encountered in secular poems, particularly in the conception of the protagonist's character and his spiritual progress, as well as the order of the world that these texts construct. The course offers students a deeper insight into the issues that shape the study and understanding of Old English poetry in general.
Topic Overview: i. Heroic tales: an inquiry into the "tradition of heroic epic"; ii. Biblical epic: Genesis A, B; iii. Between Old English and Latin: heroic elements in the Latin Vita Sancti Guthlaci; iv. The hero, the court, the wilderness: Beowulf and Guthlac; v. A reassessment of heroic images: Juliana.
Předmět je vyučován v angličtině.
