This course explores the Old English epic Beowulf from an ecocritical perspective, bringing the poem into conversation with aboriginal trickster methodologies, local BC forest politics, medieval Arabic travel writings, and other relevant discourses. What happens when we look beyond the human and make monsters, seas, fire, blood, gold, ice, ravens, and wolves the centers of our reading?
We will read Beowulf in two literary translations, along with selections from other relevant early medieval works and contemporary ecocritical theory. All reading will be in translation, but students with knowledge of Old English will have the opportunity to work with the original.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Please obtain in hard copy:
Hacksilver, armlet, ingot, coin, Viking, Blois, Tours, Sens, Paris, Quentovic, Bruges, Cambrai, Shelford, Preston, Cuerdale
- Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
- Thomas Meyer’s Beowulf, trans. Thomas Meyer
Please access electronically through UBC Libraries:
- Shira Wolosky, How to Read a Poem
- Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Prismatic Ecology