Welcome Letter from Dr Iris Pearson

Dear First Years,

Welcome to Oxford, and to Lincoln. In your first term, you will study English literature between 1830 and 1910 (known as ‘Prelims Paper 3’). The Victorian period comes with a mixed reputation which honours the range and variety of its outputs: the zenith of realism meets long, long novels; poets experiment with the sonnet and the elegy, as well as with more difficult and unformed verse forms; texts feature English domestic politics and slavery narratives. The nineteenth century saw an exponential increase in literary production and consumption, as advances in print technology made it easier to publish, while educational and social reforms expanded the size of the reading (and writing) public.

As you’ll quickly learn about Prelims papers, there is no simple or single way to cover this diverse, exciting and international literary period in eight weeks. Our work this term will focus instead on drawing out some central themes within the century, tracing strands between authors, genres and contexts, and thinking about the most apt and productive approaches to writing about Victorian fiction and poetry.

The teaching for this paper will be structured as a combination of classes and tutorials, each organising primary and secondary material according to a particular theme or preoccupation of the period. Classes will have core texts, which are compulsory reading, while tutorials will offer a list of options, which you can choose between, as well as a list of further reading suggestions to explore. For each tutorial, I’ll ask you to write an essay; for classes, I will set one or two tasks, often related to a presentation or a shorter, more informal piece of writing, which will help us think more creatively about the set literature.

I’ll circulate a more detailed syllabus once you arrive in Oxford, but for now, here is a list of essential pre-reading across a range of genres and forms. Please read it all carefully. I recognise that you suddenly have a lot to do before arriving in Oxford, and the reading list is not intended to be overwhelming – although it should highlight the importance of getting ahead with reading some of the longer novels over the summer. The more you do before you arrive, the more productive and less overwhelming the term will be, giving you space to focus on secondary material and lesser-known primary texts to complement the canonical ones. There’s no avoiding the heft of some of these novels, but I promise that you’ll find thrill, emotion, humour and surprise in these texts. Get stuck into the reading, and arrive in Oxford open to conversation, and we’ll have a great term.

I’m very happy to field any questions you have about this document (iris.pearson@ell.ox.ac.uk); otherwise I look forward to meeting you in October. Congratulations once again on all your hard work to achieve this place at Oxford.

Reading

I’ve flagged here some of the longer texts that we’ll look at during the term. You should look to buy a physical (paperback) copy of each of the novels (this applies to all texts we read this term), as it will be much easier to work with, both as you read and as we discuss in class: second-hand copies of these texts are almost always available on https://www.abebooks.co.uk/, or on websites like World of Books; look out for copies published by Penguin, Oxford University Press, or W.W. Norton, which will have been expertly edited and will often include a helpful introduction. As you read, take plenty of notes, whether annotating particular pages or marking intriguing / vexing passages to return to during the term. In classes, I’ll want you to bring up specific passages of interest, as well as threading themes and preoccupations through the text, so have your eyes open for these. And keep your receipts, as you may be able to apply to the college to defray the costs.

• Charles Dickens. Definitely read Great Expectations (1860-61) and A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and pick one other out of Hard Times (1854) or The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). We’ll look at this with Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) or Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), so you could also get a headstart with one of those.
• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
• George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871)

We’ll also look at some drama: over the vacation, I want you to read one play by each of these writers:

• Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) or A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man (1894) or You Can Never Tell (1897)
• John Millington Synge, The Playboy of the Western World (1907) or Riders to the Sea (1904)

We’ll also study poetry by George Meredith, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Over the vacation, I’d like you to dip into poems by these writers – The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume E: The Victorian Age might be a good place to start, as it has excellent period and author introductions to frame your reading.

We’ll talk more about secondary reading when you get to Oxford, but if you want to start, you could have a look at some chapters from The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. by Deirdre David (2006), or Isobel Armstrong’s Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics (1993).

Best,

Dr Iris Pearson

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Welcome Letter from Dr Robert Freeman

This half of Prelims Paper 1 introduces you to some of the key concepts and theoretical approaches used in the study of English Literature, and to the disciple of English in general. The skills you learn in this course are intended to refine your future research, and to inform your encounter with subsequent period papers. We’ll discuss topics such as the definition and value of literature, what it means to interpret a text, the use we make of historical context, and the relationship between literature and identity. Across the term, you’ll read a range of theoretical and literary texts, and think about the ways that theory and literature relate.

Paper 1B is taught through a combination of small-group classes and tutorials, plus the English Faculty lecture series. During MT, you will produce two essays, along with short summaries of theoretical texts in preparation for seminars. The course is examined by portfolio, and so our focus throughout will be on honing your essay-writing skills, and improving your reading practices. Exam questions will be released in TT 2026 (usually in fourth week).

Should you have any questions, or need encouragement or advice, I can be contacted at robert.freeman@lincoln.ox.ac.uk. Our four seminars will take place on Monday afternoons between 2pm and 4pm in MT weeks 1, 2, 5 and 6. Tutorials will take place in weeks 4 and 8. Essays written in preparation for tutorials are due at 5pm on Tuesday of 3rd and 7th weeks – questions to be distributed in class.

A skeletal outline of the course, along with an associated reading list, can be seen below. I’ll provide extracts from each of the primary texts in our seminars, and so there is no need for you to read them in full, though you are of course welcome to do so. The secondary texts listed in bold will form the centrepiece of each class and must be read closely – you are encouraged to get through as much of the other material as possible.

Wishing you an engaging and pleasurable start to your time at Oxford!

Robert Freeman

Stipendiary Lecturer, Lincoln College

Week 1 – Beginnings

This week uses the ‘beginnings’ of four texts to help us better understand what characterises ‘literature’ and the ‘literary’, as well as to introduce you to theory and criticism. How does our experience of ‘first’ encountering a text impact on how we relate to it, and how does this experience alter or remain fixed with repeated readings? To what extent do our own histories dictate our relationship to beginnings, and what does the perceived or actual ‘importance’ or ‘value’ of a text mean for how we encounter it? In discussing these questions, we’ll also start to reflect on the relationship between criticism and literature.

Primary texts (extracts to be provided):

• Emily Dickinson ‘My Life has stood – a Loaded Gun’ (~1863)
• Henry James The Wings of the Dove (1902)
• George Saunders ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’ in Tenth of December (2013)

Secondary texts:

• Sir Philip Sidney ‘The Defence of Poesy’ (1580-81).
• Samuel Johnson ‘Chapter X: Imlac’s History (continued)—A Dissertation upon Poetry’ in Rasselas (1759).
• Matthew Arnold The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1865).
• Elaine Showalter A Literature of Their Own (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Barbara Herrnstein-Smith Contingencies of Value (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
• Gauri Viswanathan ‘Introduction’ in Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
• John Guillory ‘Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate’ in Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993).
• Christopher Ricks ‘Criticism at the Present Time: Two Notes’ and ‘Literary Principles as Against Theory’ in Essays in Appreciation (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1996).
• Terry Eagleton ‘Introduction: What Is Literature?’ and ‘1: The Rise of English’ in Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
• Derek Attridge ‘What is literature?’ and ‘The literary event’ from ‘Chapter 1: The Singularity of Literature’ in The Work of Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Peter Boxall The Value of The Novel (2015), Introduction and ch. 1: ‘The Novel Voice’.
• Ankhi Mukherjee ‘What Is a Classic?’ in What Is a Classic? Postcolonial Rewriting and Invention of the Canon (California: Stanford University Press, 2013).
• Niels Buch Leander ‘Introduction’ The Sense of a Beginning: Theory of the Literary Opening (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018)

Week 2 – Second Place

This week, we look at the relationship between ‘literature’, ‘history’ and ‘reality’. Is our understanding of a literary text dependant on familiarity with its compositional history, and in what ways is a text determined by the material conditions of its production? We’ll also think about whether a literary text is always (or ever) a representation of the world, the relationship between institutional power and literature, and the place of the discipline of literary studies in academia today.

This week, we look at the relationship between ‘literature’, ‘history’ and ‘reality’. Is our understanding of a literary text dependent on familiarity with its compositional history, and in what ways is a text conditioned by the material conditions of its production? We’ll also

Primary texts (extracts to be provided):

• William Wordsworth ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798)
• Rachel Cusk Second Place (2021)

Secondary texts:

• Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Introduction’ to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance (1982).
• Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Fiction and Friction’ in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (1988), pp.66-93.
• Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow ‘The Circulation of Social Energy’ in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (1988).
• Jane Tompkins ‘Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History’ in Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American fiction, 1790-1860 (1985), pp. 122-46.
• Hayden White, ‘New Historicism: A Comment’ in The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (1989).
• Marjorie Levinson ‘Insight and Oversight: Reading “Tintern Abbey”.’ Wordworth's Great Period Poems: Four Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 14-57.
• Charles J. Rzepka ‘Pictures of the Mind: Iron and Charcoal, “Ouzy” Tides and “Vagrant Dwellers” at Tintern, 1798.’ Studies in Romanticism 42:2 (2003), pp. 155-85.
• Jacques Derrida ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ in Dissemination trans Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
• Edward Saïd, ‘Jane Austen and Empire’ in Culture and Imperialism (1993).
• Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1920 (1995).
• Rita Felski, ‘Context Stinks!’ in NLH 42.4 (2011).
• Raymond Williams ‘Knowable Communities’ and ‘The Country and the City’ in The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973).
• Raymond Williams ‘Dominant, Residual and Emergent’ in Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
• Stuart Hall ‘Culturalism’ in Cultural Studies 1983 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).
• Frederick Jameson Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984)
• Eric Hayot, On Literary Worlds (2012).
• Joseph North Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
• Stefan Collini Speaking of Universities (London: Verso, 2017).
• Benjamin Kunkel ‘Critic, Historicise Thyself!’ NLR 136 Jul/Aug 2022.

Week 3 – Forming Interpretations

We focus this week on two abiding concerns in literary studies: form and interpretation. Starting with textual examples, we consider how the formal characteristics of a text mould our readings, as well as our appreciations of form itself. We next look at critical interventions on form’s ‘affordances’ and limitations, before turning to the vexed question of the relationship between text and meaning, considering in particular mid-twentieth century debates over the role and importance of interpretation in the analysis of texts.

Primary texts (extracts to be provided):

• Virginia Woolf The Waves (1931).
• Samuel Beckett Krapp’s Last Tape (1958).
• Geoff Dyer Zona (2012).

Secondary texts:

• I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (1924).
• William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
• Cleanth Brooks ‘The Heresy of Paraphrase’ in The Well-Wrought Urn (1947) pp.192-214.
• William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ and ‘The Affective Fallacy’ in The Verbal Icon (1954).
• Susan Sontag ‘Against Interpretation’ Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Penguin, 1966).
• Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967).
• Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’ (1969).
• Paul de Man, ‘Form and Intent in the American New Criticism’ from Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1971), pp.20-35.
• Frank Kermode ‘Getting it Right’ LRB 3(8) 1981.
• Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (1981).
• Tzvetan Todorov, Literature and its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-century Criticism (1988).
• M. Levinson, ‘What is New Formalism?’ in PMLA 122.2 (2007)
• Steven Connor ‘Spelling Things Out’ NLH 45.2 (2014).
• Caroline Levine Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2017) ‘Introduction’ and ‘Rhythm’, pp.1-23, 49-81.
• Anna Kornbluh, The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
• Franco Moretti, 'Conjectures on World Literature', NLR 136 Jan/Feb (2000).

Week 4 – Endings

In our final week we consider how the ‘endings’ of texts, and endings in general, can contribute to our understanding of the relationship between literature and ethics. Are there distinctively literary approaches to formulating and answering ethical questions, can literary texts be read for their ethical valence, and what, if any, are the ethical responsibilities of literary texts and of their producers? Do the endings of literary texts give us a way into thinking about the foundations of ethical duties? Finally, we’ll think about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics – are these two domains connected, and to what extent is either (or both) ‘normative’?

Primary texts (extracts to be provided):

• A.A. Milne ‘Happiness’ (1924)
• Iris Murdoch A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970).
• Ottessa Moshfegh My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018).

Secondary texts:

• Percy Bysshe Shelley ‘Defence of Poetry’ (1821).
• Frank Kermode The Sense of an Ending (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
• Iris Murdoch The Sovereignty of the Good (1970).
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988).
• Paul Gilroy The Black Atlantic (Cambridge MA, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
• Martha Nussbaum Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
• JM Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
• Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht and Georgy Lukács Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 2007).
• Sara Ahmed ‘Ethics’ Differences that Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge Uinversity Press, 2009).
• Richard Miller ‘Three Versions of Objectivity’ Aesthetics and Ethics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• Sianne Ngai ‘Introduction’ Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 1-52.
• Achille Mbembe Necropolitics: Theory in Forms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019)

Prefer to work from a paper copy? Download a printable version here. 

Welcome Letter from Dr Rebecca Menmuir

Having studied Paper 1B (Literature) in Michaelmas Term, you will turn to Paper 1A (Language) in Hilary.

This half of Paper 1 introduces you to some of the key concepts and theoretical approaches in the study of the English Language. The aim of this course is to learn how to engage in close linguistic reading of texts, to develop and apply a vocabulary of linguistic terms and concepts, and to understand the history of English (including its major developments and their causes, its rise to global status, and its current and future status).

Over the course of Hilary Term, you will learn how to analyse language using the methods of discourse analysis and stylistics, and we will cover individual topics such as the history of the English language, language and power, language and gender, and regional and social variation. We will critically read ‘everyday’ and non-literary texts, as found in the media, in politics, in advertising, and so on. We will develop writing skills, including creating bibliographies and appendices, and formatting in citation styles.

Teaching will be through a combination of classes and tutorials in college. Attending the English Faculty lectures is essential. I will circulate further details in Michaelmas Term.

You will be expected to produce a final portfolio for both halves of this course in Trinity Term, including a comparative linguistic commentary which analyses passages of your own choosing.

The Bodleian Library Guides are fantastic – I recommend taking a look at their guides for all of your papers. Relevant here is their Guide to Prelims Paper 1. Some resources here you will only be able to access once you are set up at Oxford, but the exercises are available to all:

https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/english-prelims-paper-1/training

Rebecca Menmuir

Simon and June Li Fellow in English Literature, Lincoln College

I. Essential Summer Reading

• Cameron, Deborah, and Ivan Panovic, Working With Written Discourse (Sage, 2014) – esp. Chapter 6 (‘Critical Discourse Analysis’)
• Carter, Ronald and Walter Nash, Seeing through Language: A Guide to Styles of English Writing (1990) – esp. Chapter 1 (‘Language and Style’)
• Crystal, David, The Stories of English (2005)
• Fairclough, Norman, Language and Power (2015, other eds available) – esp. Chapters 2 (‘Discourse as Social Practice’), 3 (‘Discourse and Power’), 4 (‘Discourse, Common Sense and Ideology’)
• Horobin, Simon, The English Language: A Very Short Introduction (2018)
• Mugglestone, Lynda, ed., The Oxford History of English (2006) – any chapters which interest you, runs the whole gamut of the English language

Of these, Crystal’s Stories of English and Mugglestone’s Oxford History of English will give you a crucial foundation for all of your papers at Oxford, and are thus especially important to get to grips with.

Having a solid grasp of English grammar is crucial for linguistic close reading and stylistic analysis, and it will be worth brushing up on this. The following are highly recommended:

• Biber, Douglas et al., Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (2003)
• Crystal, David, Rediscover Grammar (1988)
• Crystal, David, Making Sense of Grammar (2004)

II. Useful preparatory reading

• Baron, Dennis E., A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers and the Digital Revolution (2009)
• Cameron, Deborah, The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? (2007)
• Culpeper, Jonathan, History of English [3rd edition] (2015)
• Fowler, Roger, ‘Literature as Discourse’, in Literature as Social Discourse: The Practice of Linguistic Criticism (1981), pp. 80–95
• Horobin, Simon, Does Spelling Matter? (2013)
• Mooney, Annabelle et.al., Language, Society, and Power: An Introduction [4th edition] (2015)
• Mugglestone, Lynda, ‘Talking Proper’: The Rise of Accent as a Social Symbol [2nd edition] (2007)
• Simpson, Paul, Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students [2nd edition] (2014)
• Simpson, Paul and Andrea Mayr, Language and Power: A Resource Book for Students [2nd edition] (2018)
• Tolmach Lakoff, Robin and Mary Bucholtz, Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (2004) – esp. ‘Language and Woman’s Place’, pp. 37–75
• Watts, Richard J., Alternative Histories of English (2002)

...And Interesting Provocations

• Achebe, Chinua, ‘English and the African Writer’, Transitions 18 (1965): 342–49
• Orwell, George, ‘Politics and the English Language’, Horizon
• Ribbans, Elisabeth, ‘How the use of a word in the Guardian has gotten some readers upset’, The Guardian, 4 June 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/04/use-word-gotten-some-readers-upset
• Roy, Arundhati, ‘What is the Morally Appropriate Language in Which to Think and Write?’, Lithub, 25 July 2018: https://lithub.com/what-is-the-morally-appropriate-language-in-which-to-think-and-write/
• Taylor, Harry, ‘ “Brain rot”: Oxford word of the year 2024 reflects “trivial” use of social media’, The Guardian, 2 December 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/dec/02/brain-rot-oxford-word-of-the-year-202

III. Key resources

https://www.oed.com/

• Essential, especially for detailed etymologies. Good for understanding development of Old and Middle English

https://www.oed.com/information/using-the-oed/

• Guide to using the OED

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary

• The digitised Middle English Dictionary (MED). Essential for all things Middle English

https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/english-prelims-paper-1

• Short exercises and further resources

https://mcl.as.uky.edu/glossary-rhetorical-terms

• Glossary of rhetorical techniques

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/

• Short & readable guide to key terms of language analysis and the history of English

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/home.htm

• The Internet Grammar of English. As well as the glossary and index, the exercises are very helpful

https://glossary.sil.org/term/s

• Formal definitions of linguistic terms

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/

• A searchable glossary of rhetorical terms

http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html

• Semiotics for beginners: a glossary of terms

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Welcome Letter from Dr Rebecca Menmuir

1. Key Information

Course aims

Welcome to Prelims Paper 2! This paper will introduce you to the very earliest literature written in English. This spans the language known most commonly as ‘Old English’ but also as ‘Anglo Saxon’ or ‘pre-conquest English’ (c. AD 650–1110) through seven centuries of literature to ‘Early Middle English’ (c. AD 1100–1350). As you can imagine, there is an enormous amount of historical, literary, and linguistic change over these seven centuries, and a fantastic variety in the literature of the period. You will encounter epics, heroic poetry, laments, riddles, religious poems, debates, and much more. This paper’s lectures, classes, and tutorials will approach the fundamentals of the Old English language, its contexts, and literary themes and devices. You will question what we mean by both ‘English’ and ‘Literature’, and build a firm foundation for the rest of your degree.

Oxford is unique in offering an alternative pathway through its English degree: in second and third year students can choose to take ‘Course II’, which focuses solely on earlier literature (650–1550) and the history of the English language.

Our set texts are the Old English The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, Beowulf, and the Early Middle English The Owl and the Nightingale.

Tutor contact details

Dr Rebecca Menmuir (rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk), she/her.

I am typically able to respond to emails between 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, and will always reply as soon as I am able. I do not have office hours: if you wish to discuss the course, please email to make an appointment.

Teaching format and essays

We will have weekly classes (in groups) and tutorials (in pairs or threes). Attending the Faculty lectures will be essential.

Assessment

At the end of your first year (‘Prelims’) there will be a 3-hour exam, in which you will be required to write a commentary on a passage of an Old English set text and two essays. You are given a choice of questions for both the commentary and the essay sections.

Once you are in Oxford, it will be useful to become acquainted early on with the exam format and types of questions. Past papers are hosted on SOLO, Oxford’s online catalogue platform: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/solo.

2. Reading and Resources

You will need to buy a copy of Mitchell and Robinson / Burrow and Turville-Petre / Treharne (all listed below). Once at Oxford, you will have access to many extensive University libraries, including the Bodleian Library, the English Faculty Library, and your College Library. The Bodleian is a ‘legal deposit’ library, meaning it contains a copy of every book published in the UK and Ireland! You will be able to use SOLO, Oxford’s library catalogue to search for physical books (among its many other functions). Many books are now available as e-Books on SOLO, although it is crucial to develop your skills in navigating libraries and physical books.

If you have trouble sourcing any of the items listed below before you arrive in Oxford, especially those under ‘essential summer reading’, please email me and I shall do my best to help.

Essential summer reading

Set texts and essentials:

• Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English [8th edition] (2011).

Contains The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, Beowulf (ll. 702–897, the set passage)

• John Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English [3rd edition] (2005).

Contains The Owl and the Nightingale (ll. 1–390, the set passage)

• Elaine Treharne, Old and Middle English, c.890-c.1450: An Anthology [3rd edition] (2010).

Mitchell and Robinson / Burrow and Turville-Petre are the set editions of this paper’s key texts, and Treharne contains almost all of the other primary readings we will encounter (in the original and in translation). It is therefore essential to acquire a copy of these before term begins. Familiarise yourself with the layout, read through the introductions to the language, look up unfamiliar words and technical terms, and have a look at the set texts in particular.

Translations:

Read the translations of The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, and Beowulf in: Treharne’s Old and Middle English.

I strongly encourage you to read through the Old English works in Treharne, especially Cædmon’s Hymn, The Seafarer, Deor, the selection of Exeter Book Riddles, Judith. Many of these are only one or two pages long!

Another edition of Old English verse, in translation only, is:

• A. C. Bradley, ed., Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1991) – you may find it especially useful to compare how the same text is translated in Treharne compared to Bradley.

Another good edition of Beowulf is:

• R. M. Liuzza, ed. and trans., Beowulf: Second Edition (with facing-page translation) (2013) – a verse translation. Take care to get the one with the Old English included, as Liuzza’s translation is also available on its own.

You could also read Seamus Heaney, trans., Beowulf (1999), which is a very engaging introduction to the text and a spectacular piece of poetry – but not as closely linked to the Old English as Liuzza, and won’t help you get as much of a feel for the Old English.

Read through a translation of The Owl and the Nightingale at:

http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/trans/owl/owltrans.htm.

Important overview:

• Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (2006).

Reading through this Companion as much as you can will give you a firm grounding for just about everything we will cover – thematically and contextually – over the year!

Old English language:

The following resources will help you get to grips with the language over the summer. While there are many excellent introductions to Old English language, we will primarily be referring to (and working from):

•    Peter S. Baker, Introduction to Old English: Third Edition (2012).

Working very well in conjunction with this text are Peter Baker’s online resources at:

http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/

Particularly helpful here:

- Under ‘Miscellaneous Resources’, find ‘The Magic Sheet of Old English Declensions’. This provides all the basics of Old English grammar on one A4 page.

- To test your understanding, complete (as a minimum) the following exercises in the ‘Workout Room’: ‘What case should it be?’, ‘Nouns and pronouns’, ‘Pronoun paradigm drill (elementary)’, ‘Noun paradigm drill (elementary)’, ‘Verb paradigm drill (elementary)’, ‘Subjects and verbs’, ‘Pronouns and their antecedents’, ‘Nouns and their modifiers’, ‘Alliteration’, ‘Rhythmic types’.

It is imperative to check and reinforce your understanding of grammatical terminology, all of which is contained in Baker and his Old English Aerobics website. You should also read through the ‘Introduction to Traditional Grammar’ here, especially ‘parts of speech’:

http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/notes/grammar.htm

Make sure you know terms such as: ‘noun’, ‘verb’, ‘adjective’, ‘adverb’, ‘pronoun’, ‘preposition’, ‘conjunction’, ‘definite article’, ‘past participle’, ‘present participle’, ‘indicative mood’, ‘subjunctive mood’, ‘imperative mood’, ‘nominative case’, ‘accusative case’, ‘genitive case’, ‘dative case’.

n.b. this will be essential for your Prelims Paper 1 work, too.

Alphabet note:

At first sight, Old English can look unfamiliar – more like German or Icelandic. The French linguistic influence that followed the Norman Conquest (1066) has yet to enter the scene. Old English has some characters no longer used in Modern English, most noticeably ð (‘eth’) and þ (‘thorn’), both of which are pronounced with a ‘th’ sound.

A useful dictionary;

• Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898–1921), searchable online at http://www.bosworthtoller.com/. For looking up individual words, and the glossary at the back of Mitchell and Robinson also works as a mini-dictionary.

Early Middle English language:

Our focus in Michaelmas will be Old English and so your focus over summer should be getting to grips with that language. In Hilary Term we will move on to Early Middle English: you will have the winter vacation to prepare, but it is a short vacation and you will have many other things to do!

Early Middle English is closer to modern English, but it still requires language learning. There are different letter forms: the eth (ð, ‘th’ sound) and thorn (þ, ‘th’ sound) are still in use, as well as yogh (ȝ, a softer g sound, sometimes as in loch). Vocabulary is often very different to modern English. You will find Early Middle English an essential stepping stone for Middle English (e.g. Chaucer) later in your degree. Read:

• Burrow and Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English.

- Read at least Part 1, pp. 1–73.

• R. D. Fulk, An Introduction to Middle English: Grammar and Texts (2012).

- Read at least ‘Historical overview: The transition from Old to Middle English’. Fulk’s book spans the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and therefore captures a broader change than our course (which ends at 1350). The texts contained in ‘Twelfth Century’ and ‘Thirteenth Century’ will be worth a read (and there is a version of The Owl and the Nightingale in there too).

Further reading

Cambridge Elements:

A developing scholarly form is the ‘minigraph’, shorter academic books. ‘Cambridge Elements’ has a series of relevant minigraphs called ‘England in the Early Medieval World’:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/elements/england-in-the-early-medieval-world

See especially the recent publications, Literary Form in Early Medieval England and Natural and Supernatural in Early Medieval England.

Language:

• Mark Atherton, Complete Old English: Teach Yourself (London, 2012).
• Hana Videen, The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English (2021). [A fun introduction]

Historical contexts:

Bear in mind that ‘the Anglo-Saxon period’ in historical terms is long – it begins with the migration of the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes into Britain in the fifth century, but most of the texts we will discuss are written down (and many of them possibly composed) in the later tenth/early eleventh centuries, not long before the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Try to stay aware of this as you learn about the period. History books begin with early events such as the conversion to Christianity in the seventh century. As a context for much of the literature we will be looking at, these events are fairly remote. Make sure you persevere to sections about mid- and later Anglo-Saxon England, especially Viking attacks from the eighth century, King Alfred’s reign and the creation of the Danelaw in the ninth century, and the Benedictine Reform in the tenth century.

• John Blair, The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction (2000).
• Miri Rubin, The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (2014).
• Eleanor Parker, Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year (2022). [a fun read aimed at the public, rather than an academic book]

See also Eleanor Parker’s excellent blog about all things medieval, often featuring local Oxford detail: https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/.

Literary contexts:

• Hugh Magennis, The Cambridge Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature (2011).

Biblical contexts:

For perhaps any course in English Literature, but certainly in Old and Middle English literature, it is crucial to have an understanding of biblical traditions. Reading the Bible in any version (e.g. the King James) will be helpful, especially Genesis, Job, and the Psalms in the Old Testament and the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelations in the New Testament.

For the details, the most appropriate version to use for this period is the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate (for an online edition of the Latin and English alongside each other, go to http://www.latinvulgate.com).

For an overview of Christian scriptural traditions:

• John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (2000)

See also:

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [3rd edition] (2013)

– e.g. entries on ‘Trinity’, ‘Sacrament’, ‘Eucharist’, ‘Gospel’, ‘Liturgy’, ‘Office, Divine’, ‘Mattins’, ‘Vespers’, ‘Parish’, ‘Annunciation of the BVM’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Harrowing of Hell’, ‘Sacrifice’, ‘Martyr’, ‘Saints, devotion to the’, ‘Anglo-Saxon Church’.

The field of Old English scholarship:

Old English scholarship has a long history, much of which was shaped at Oxford. You will recognise J. R. R. Tolkien, tutor at Oxford, whose ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’ helped develop critical appreciation and understanding of Beowulf and beyond. Here is an entertaining recent piece about how Tolkien and C. S. Lewis shaped the Oxford English course, especially how Old English is taught:

• Simon Horobin, ‘‘Never Trust a Philologist’: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Place of Philology in English Studies’, Review of English Studies 75.2 (2024): 209–226.

More seriously, debates have been raging over the last few years around the long-established scholarly usage of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the historical period and the people who inhabited pre-Conquest England. Two perspectives and overviews:

• Michael Wood, ‘Is the Term “Anglo-Saxon” Racist?’, History Extra (Nov 2019): https://www.historyextra.com/period/anglo-saxon/professor-michael-wood-anglo-saxon-name-debate-is-term-racist/.
• Mary Rambaran-Olm, ‘Misnaming the Medieval: Rejecting “Anglo-Saxon” Studies’, History Workshop (Nov 2019): http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/misnaming-the-medieval-rejecting-anglo-saxon-studies/.

Early Middle English:

• Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith, An Introduction to Middle English (2002).
• Wendy Scase, ‘Re-inventing the Vernacular’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Literature 1100–1500, ed. Larry Scanlon (2009), pp. 11–24.

Medievalism:

Medievalism is literature, art, architecture, or other work which looks back to the medieval in some way: every single one of your lectures, classes, and individual readings is a form of medievalism, shaped by how we currently understand the medieval in scholarship and popular culture. Medievalism is having a ‘moment’: many of the texts listed here are from the past 10 years.

In Prelims Paper 2, you are permitted to write on medievalism in your exam, as long as you also show a good understanding of the original Old English text.

General:

• Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, eds, Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (2014).

- Nearly all of these entries are worth looking through, but esp. Authenticity, Authority, Christianity, Heresy, Memory, Middle, Play, Simulacrum, Trauma.

• David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History (2015).

- Again, the whole book is worth a read, but especially Part II: Time, Space, Self, Society.

• Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein, The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past (2012).
• Tison Pugh and Angela Jane Weisl, eds, Medievalisms: Making the Past in the Present (2013).
• Amy Jeffs, Wild: Tales From Early Medieval Britain (2022). 

- Creative adaptations of stories from the period]

• W. H. Auden, The Wanderer (1930).
• Caroline Bergvall, Drift (2014).

- Reimagines the Old English The Seafarer.

• Seamus Heaney, The Wanderer, in Stations (1975).

- A curious short prose poem from the translator of Beowulf.

• Ezra Pound, The Seafarer (1911).
• Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife (2018).

- A retelling of Beowulf set in 21st-century America.

Other resources

• In Our Time, a radio series since 1998: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl.

See esp. episodes on Beowulf, the Venerable Bede, Alfred and the Battle of Edington, Athelstan, St Hilda, the Danelaw, the Trinity, Miracles, Prayer, Heaven, Hell, the Fall, the Apocalypse, St Paul.

• You’re Dead to Me, a historical comedy podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07mdbhg.

Some excellent medieval content and good for context and the medieval world (e.g. ‘Medieval Christmas’, ‘Medieval Animals’, ‘Old Norse Literature’), but no specific Old English episode (yet).

• Dr Thijs Porck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thijsporck.

Channel about Old English, Early Medieval England, and Tolkien.

• The History of English, a podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/.

3. Outline for Michaelmas and Hilary Terms 2025-26.

Michaelmas Term 2025

Week 1: Class. An introduction to Old English.

Week 2: Class. The Dream of the Rood and Old English grammar.

Week 3: Class. The Dream of the Rood and Christ as hero..

Week 4: Class. The Dream of the Rood, poetics, and Old English objects.

Week 5: Tutorial. Commentary on The Dream of the Rood.

Week 6: Class. The Wanderer and the Old English mode of complaint.

Week 7: Class. The Wanderer and old- to modern-English elegies.

Week 8: Class. The Wanderer and a language recap.

Tutorial. Essay on topics from the term.

Vacation essay: Commentary on The Wanderer, and an essay on Old English riddles.

Hilary Term 2026

Week 1: Tutorial. Based on your vacation commentary and essay.

Week 2: Class. Beowulf and monsters.

Week 3: Class. Beowulf and heroes.

Week 4: Class. Beowulf and gender.

Week 5: Tutorial. An essay on Beowulf and beyond.

Class. An introduction to Early Middle English.

Week 6: Class. The Owl and the Nightingale and Early Middle English themes.

Week 7: Class. The Owl and the Nightingale and material contexts.

Week 8: Tutorial. Commentary on The Owl and the Nightingale.

Vacation essay: Essay. Commentary on a set text, and an essay on early medieval romance.

Trinity Term 2025

Week 1: Tutorial. Based on your vacation commentary and essay.

Beyond Week 1, there are no set classes or tutorials in Trinity. I will arrange Prelims 2 revision classes which you are advised to attend.

I will be happy to mark any commentary or essay practice plans ad hoc. I will also be available for meetings to discuss Prelims 2 – and, at this stage, Course II, which is a medieval-only pathway that some students choose to take up in their second and third years.

See you in Michaelmas!

^{Cat and mouse in the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1320–1340 (London, British Library, Add. MS 42130)}

Prefer to work from a paper copy? Download a printable version here.