Programme

Feasts and banquets in medieval England

Through the reading of a selection of passages from works of poetry of the Old (Beowulf and other texts) and Middle English literary tradition (Chaucer and the Gawain’poet), the main features of the conventions of hospitality in medieval English literature will be identified. Banquet scenes - to be interpreted as visible signs of magnificence, power and idealized order- will also be addressed through references to other works of the Germanic world, mainly German and Norse.

The philological-literary analysis of these texts will be combined with an outline of the fundamental changes of the English language through the centuries.

Core Documentation

- Brunetti, Giuseppe, ed., Beowulf, Roma: Carocci, (selection of passages)
- Fulk, R. D., Robert Bjork and J. D. Niles, ed., Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008)
- D. Benson, Larry.D, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1987 (selection of passages)
- Andrew. Malcolm and R. Waldron, Ronald, edd., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Exeter: Exeter University Press 2007 (selections of passages)
- Barber, Charles, The English Language: a Historical Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993
- Wallace, David, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 (chapters 1,2,6,21,26)
- Fadda, Anna Maria Luiselli, Tradizioni manoscritte e critica del testo nel Medioevo germanico, Roma-Bari: Laterza 2004 (Parts Two and Three)

Reference Bibliography

- Frank, Roberta, 'The Beowulf Poet's Sense of History', in The Wisdom of Poetry, eds. Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1982, pp. 53-65. - Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson, ed., Beowulf: an Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). - Neidorf, Leonard, The Transmission of Beowulf: Language, Culture, and Scribal Behavior, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2017 - Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995 - Boitani, Piero, La letteratura del Medioevo inglese, Roma: Carocci 2001. - Robinson, Fred C., Beowulf and the Appositive Style, Hodges lectures, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985 - Frantzen, Allen J, Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press 2014 - Magennis, Hugh, Anglo-Saxon Appetites: Food and Drink and Their Consumption in Old English and Related Literature, Dublin: Four Courts Press 1999 A variety of additional materials (critical editions, glossaries, critical essays etc.) will be provided during the course.

Attendance

Students are advised to attend classes. Those who cannot attend them are requested to contact the teacher at the beginning of the course.