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'Towards a New Literary History of Old English Prose'

Event information>

Dates

This is a past event
Time
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
Location

Hybrid event via Teams, and Room 102, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Institute

Institute of English Studies

Event type

Seminar

Event series

London Old and Middle English Research Seminar

Speakers

Francis Leneghan (University of Oxford)

Contact

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.


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This page was last updated on 2 July 2024