Class Archive

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TuTh 2-3:30

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding in relation to both medieval manuscripts and modern editions, as well as with the grammar and vocabula...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 2-3:30

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or under...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding and the grammar and vocabulary of, primarily, Old English prose: historiographical (histories), hagiog...(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Medieval Sexuality

TTh 5-6:30

For more information about this section of English 190, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding and the grammar and vocabulary of, primarily, Old English prose: historiographical (histories), hagiog...(read more)

166/7

Special Topics:
Arthurian Romance

TTh 2-3:30

King Arthur and his Round Table together constitute one of the most enduring imaginative inventions in the European literary tradition. In the modern era, writers and artists have created Arthurian plays, films, poems, novels, cartoons, paintings, ...(read more)

165/2

Special Topics:
The Pleasures of Allegory

MWF 12-1

If you want to understand both how stories are put together and how we experience stories, allegory is not a bad place to start. Broadly speaking, an allegory is a story that demands to be read on more than one level. One version of this&mdash...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Carnal Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

TTh 9:30-11

Medieval feminist scholar Carolyn Dinshaw has argued that the body is "a field on which issues of representation and interpretation are literally and metaphorically played out" ("Eunuch Hermeneutics," 27). This re...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 11-12

This course will equip you to read the earliest English literature: lives of saints, accounts of Viking invasion, poetry about onions, and the rest. You will learn to read Old English by direct study of texts in the original. This course will help ...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
Journeys: British World-Building, c. 700-1700

TTh 11-12:30

"Britain, formerly known as Albion, is an island in the ocean, lying towards the north west at a considerable distance from the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which together form the greater part of Europe." (Bede, Ecclesias...(read more)

174/2

Literature and History:
History as Literature

TTh 3:30-5

Are the events of the world and human lives meaningful? And if they are, how do we discern the meaning?

History, as a form of narrative literature, seeks to answer these questions. In this class we will read a range of historical texts, w...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Hwæt! Leorniað Englisc!

In this introduction to Old English, you will begin to read and write Old English from your first day in class, while also learning fundamental principles of grammar and historical language change. As you...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Monsters, Exiles, and Outlaws in Medieval Literature

TTh 9:30-11

This course focuses on murderers, monsters, and thieves. Zombies, although not our main focus, also arise. Such figures are excluded from society and cut off from their fellow human beings, whether because they have committed an unpardonable crime ...(read more)

105/1

Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 2-3:30

“Britain, once called Albion, is an island of the ocean...” When the priest Bede set out in the early 700s to write the history of the place we now call England, he portrayed it as a new nation with a deep past, a remote corner of the ...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Beowulf

TTh 9:30-11

Beowulf is the longest, subtlest, and in many ways the strangest and most difficult Old English poem that has survived from Anglo-Saxon England. Since its rediscovery in the 18^th century, we have learned much about its language...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Canst þu þis gewrit understandan? Want to? “Introduction to Old English” will give you the tools to read a wide variety of writings from among the earliest recorded texts in the English language. What is there to r...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland: Visions of Other Worlds in Medieval British Literature

MWF 9-10

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

170/1

Literature and the Arts:
The Deaths and Lives of Saints

MWF 11-12

The paradox of Western sainthood is summed up by a phrase from Latin calendars: dies natalis, “birthday.” Marking a saint’s chief feast, the dies natalis celebrates the day of his or her death: death as birth wi...(read more)

205B/1

Old English:
Late Old English

TTh 2-3:30

In this course, we will explore the curious phenomenon of Old English after the Norman Conquest. Although English’s status as a language of power was overturned in 1066, the vernacular lived on in many guises—most remarkably as recogni...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Hwæt! Leorniað Englisc!

In this all-new version of the introduction to Old English, you will begin to read and write Old English from your first day in class, while also learning fundamental principles of grammar and historical la...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar:
Poetry and Poetics in the Middle Ages

TTh 2-3:30

This class will explore early England's shifting literary landscape in order to better understand what poetry was and what it was for in the Middle Ages. Juxtaposing our close analyses of individual poems and groups of poems with medieval theo...(read more)

203/3

Graduate Readings:
Judgment in Early Medieval Literature

W 11-2

Judgment--alternately or simultaneously a mental faculty, abstract entity, virtue, void, or threat--pervades medieval literature and thought. Focusing particularly (though not exclusively) on Anglo-Saxon England, in this seminar we will attempt to...(read more)

45A/2

Literature in English: Through Milton

MW 2-3 + discussion sections F 2-3

In this course you will explore some of the great foundational works of English literature, ranging from the very earliest period up to Milton's Paradise Lost. In the process, you will learn to understand--and even speak!--the forms o...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 11-12

Hwæt! Leorniaþ Englisc!

In this class, you will learn to read, write, and even speak the language of Beowulf. Once you have completed it, you will be able to understand—and will have read!—a wide range of te...(read more)

205A/1

Old English

This course will not be offered in 2014-15, but English Department graduate students may take the undergraduate equivalent, English 104 (Introduction to Old English), this fall in its place; see the listing for that course in this Announcement of ...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland - Visions of Other Worlds

MWF 2-3

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

205B/1

Old English:
Reading Beowulf

TTh 2-3:30

In “Reading Beowulf” we will be particularly interested in the making of Beowulf as a text and as a canonical poem. The first goal addresses issues of language, paleography, and textual editing as we translate; the se...(read more)

105/1

Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 2-3:30

“Britain, once called Albion, is an island of the ocean...” When the priest Bede set out in the early 700s to write the history of the place we now call England, he portrayed it as a new nation with a deep past, a remote corner of the ...(read more)

205A/1

Old English

TTh 11-12:30

This class introduces students to the language, literature, and modern critical study of the written vernacular culture of England before the Norman Conquest—an era whose language and aesthetics now seem radically foreign. By the end of the ...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

Canst þu þis gewrit understandan? Want to? “Introduction to Old English” will give you the tools to read a wide variety of writings from among the earliest recorded texts in the English language. What is there to r...(read more)

203/2

Graduate Readings:
Struggling With Consolation--Reading Boethius in Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 9:30-11

This course has a double aim: to explore the reception of Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae in Anglo-Saxon England and to do so by engaging one of the remarkable achievements of Anglo-Saxon translation, the Old English version...(read more)

205A/1

Old English

TTh 11-12:30

This class introduces students to the language, literature, and modern critical study of the written vernacular culture of England before the Norman Conquest—an era whose language and aesthetics now seem radically foreign. By the end of the ...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

Canst þu þis gewrit understandan? Want to? “Introduction to Old English” will give you the tools to read a wide variety of writings from among the earliest recorded texts in the English language. What is there to read? W...(read more)

105/1

Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 3:30-5

Who were the Angelcynn? What were the English like before they were “English”? The name “Anglo-Saxon England” is a relatively modern term to designate peoples and kingdoms that, across several centuries before the ...(read more)

105/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Anglo-Saxon England

MW 10:30-12

105/1

:
Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 12:30-2

105/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 12:30-2