The History of English

Fall 2016, Tempe, AZ

Elly van Gelderen

 

Lindisfarne

An image from the Lindisfarne Gospels

 

We will be using chapters from the History of English, which will be available in pdf format:

Week 1: Pre-Old English and starting Old English: Reading can be found here and handout here.

Week 2: Old English and starting Middle English: handout on Orosius, Lindisfarne, and ME one.

Week 3: From Middle to Early Modern English and HO.

Resources

Bosworth & Toller

Clark Hall

The University of Calgary provides a thorough 15-lesson Old English course for online learners.

The University of Virginia hosts the interestingly titled "Old English Aerobics", consisting of many useful grammar exercises for the student of Old English. It has a link to the `magic sheet', a one-page guide to inflections. Something more on noun-declensions. Conjugate your verbs here.

Some additional links

http://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/catalogue/mss.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_illuminated_Anglo-Saxon_manuscripts

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_9381

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/yorkdoom/palweb/week09/palwk9ba.htm

http://www.jassa.org/?p=3061

In case you'd like to know about manuscripts:

Textbook

Extra exercises: Aelfric and Clemoes' edition, and ...

The British Museum has a turn-the-pages version of the Lindisfarne Gospels as well as other works; The Exeter Cathedral has a copy of the Exeter Book which you can visit in person but which they no longer have on the internet. Bodleian images are here and from Cambridge here.

The University of Duisburg-Essen site has a very informative page on OE writings and wonderful images of manuscripts.

Brown 1991 is available here; and excerpts from Clemens & Graham here.