'Towards a New Literary History of Old English Prose'
- Event type
- Seminar
- Series
- London Old and Middle English Research Seminar
- Address
- Hybrid event via Teams, and Room 102, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
- Speakers
- Francis Leneghan (University of Oxford)
- Event dates
- Contact
- IESEvents@sas.ac.uk Email only
No book-length literary history of Old English prose has ever been written, and perhaps for good reason. The corpus is vast and much of it has traditionally been regarded as non-literary. In this paper, I will make the case for the value of such a project, outlining my approach and explaining the rationale for the book’s structure and scope. Moving away from the ‘great man’ view of literary history, this project will place the achievements of named prose authors such as Alfred, Wulfstan and Ælfric in a much wider story of prose experiment and stylistic development stretching from the seventh to eleventh centuries.
This event is hybrid. Registration for in-person or online attendance available.
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