Premodern Textualities
- Winter 2022
Syllabus Description:
ENGL 599A: Premodern Textualities (Special Studies in English)
Theories of formulaic composition and transitional literacy offer a rare example of a radically new, twentieth-century critical praxis that took hold immediately across multiple disciplines and continues to develop even now. A foundational concept has been the figure of the oral poet, enacting kaleidoscopic verse before an enthusiastic audience and, thereby, transmitting the records of a transient society. The touchstones of public performance and prodigious memorization, however, quickly had to confront the paradox that our main evidence for ancient and medieval oral cultures is preserved in written documents. There has been growing recognition that the interface between spoken and written communication seldom can be defined clearly for the Premodern periods. It is perhaps more appropriate to think of an Oral-Literate continuum. The name of this seminar has been chosen to reflect this dual concern, implicit in the notion of textuality itself and going back directly to the Latin verb _texere_, "to (inter)weave" -- or to compose (to "put together") language deliberately, formulaically and rhetorically. In addition to the main course texts, there will be a review of a spectrum of theoretical writings, drawing on short excerpts of writings by Fradenberg, Lees, Overing, Horner, Finke, and Dockray-Miller, as well as earlier work by Curtius, Iser, Cerquiglini, Zumthor and Ohly, along with non-medievalists (or sometime medievalists) Bakhtin, Bataille, Kristeva, Spivak, Baba, Deleuze and Guattari. In addition, this seminar will undertake an especially close reading of _The Textuality of Old English Poetry_, by our late West Coast colleague (at UCSB), Carol Braun Pasternack, to mark the close of the first year since this scholar's sudden passing.
The intention is for this seminar to meet at least 50% on campus (augmented even there, however, by remote viewing options, forums, and recordings, which will be provided generously to any seminar members who may require them), with perhaps 20% (or more, but no more than 50%) being conducted wholly online.
Course Texts:
Lord, Albert B., The Singer of Tales, rev. ed. (Harvard)
Hooker, J. T., introd., Reading the Past: Ancient Writing From Cuneiform to the Alphabet (British Museum)
Brown, Michelle P., A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600, 2nd ed. (Toronto)
Pasternack, Carol Braun, The Textuality of Old English Poetry (Cambridge)
Recommended
Foley, John Miles, The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology (Indiana) [possible, lower-cost substitute for Lord, as above]
Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds., The World's Writing Systems (Oxford)
Bischoff, Bernhard, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge) [possible, lower-cost substitute for Brown, as above]
O'Brien O'Keeffe, Katherine, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse (Cambridge)