The Melbourne Literature Seminars

We’ll be picking up where we left off before Christmas, with a bit more of Ælfric’s Colloquy to get us into the grammatical mood, then on to other prose texts, ending (I hope) with Bede’s famous account of the poet Cædmon.  Your Mitchell & Robinson will be all you’ll need.  Anyone interested who did not attend part I will be welcome, but you’ll need to have some prior acquaintance with the basics of Old English grammar to get much out of the experience.

12 two-hour sessions starting Monday, 2 February, 12-2pm in Ross House, second floor room 2.1 (slightly cozier, but quieter, and I trust we’ll fit comfortably)

Fee $250 (please note new account details on homepage)

Auden can sometimes seem a bit overshadowed by his many illustrious contemporaries and peers, who included T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens. Yikes! Yet his poems are suffused with a warm intelligence and genial humanity, expressed in a voice wholly his own.  For this course I’ll compile a brief representative selection of Auden’s poems to distribute in the first session.

Six weekly sessions, 1-3pm, starting Thursday 29 January.  Here’s a PDF of the full scehdule and fee details:

WH Auden room bookings

The MLS Refectory is a lunch-time series of one-hour poetry sessions that meets on Wednesdays 1-2 pm in Ross House.  The 2014 sessions were a great success I’m very much hoping to see continue.  Bring your lunch, your curiosity and $10.  I’ll bring the poems.  Kicking us off on 14 January will be Marianne Moore.  A  PDF of the full schedule of the first ten sessions can be found below.

MLS Refectory first series 2015

The Melbourne Literature Seminars Refectory

 12 individual 1-hour sessions beginning 6 August

An initial series of 12 1-hour luncthime sessions, each dedicated to a poem or poems by one poet.  The fee for each will be $10 payable on the day, and each will be free-standing, so you can pick and choose as you like.  Full details in the file attached below

The MLS Refectory schedule August to October 2014

Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur

The current cover of Helen Cooper’s edition, the text I’ll be teaching from

12 2-hour sessions starting 7 August

full details of schedule, text and fees in the attached file below

Malory’s compendium of all the major medieval Arthurian stories and traditions is one of the last great medieval English texts.  Just about every later re-telling of Arthur’s story, from children’s books to novels, poems, plays and movies (even the odd broadway musical!), draws on Malory’s achievement, which marks the bittersweet end of an age, both in a legendary ancient Britain and in Malory’s own 15th-century England. Triumph and tragedy, romance and wonder abound, in some of the most beguiling prose you’ll ever encounter ahead of the King James Bible.

Malorys Morte DArthur Room Bookings

Introduction to Old English

12 2-hour sessions starting 24 September

full details of schedule, text and fees in the attached file below

Long promised, at last delivered!  This is your chance to amaze your friends and become fluent in English as it was spoken and used as a language of literature, religion, history and a great deal more over a thousand years ago.  Here you’ll find an entirely new world that has nonetheless bequeathed more of itself to our present-day life and language than you might think.  No experience necessary:  this is a subject I have had decades of experience in helping beginners negotiate.  All you need bring is your interest, a willingness to take on a little lanuage-work between sessions,  and a copy of Mitchell & Robinson’s A Guide To Old English (pictured)

Introduction to Old English Room Bookings

 Text for Malory’s Morte D’Arthur

If you’re interested in this course and  want to get a jump on the reading, I suggest you acquire the following edition:

Le Morte D’Arthur: the Winchester Manuscript, ed. Helen Cooper.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.  ISBN 9780199537341

This edition is lightly abridged but contains all the matter I’d like to discuss.  It also features modernized spellings:  all Malory’s vocabulary that survives to the present day is given its modern spelling, and the spelling of his archaic vocabulary is regularized, all of which makes the task of reading what he wrote much easier for non-specialists.  I’m going to be teaching from this edition myself, which is currently available from The Book Depository with quick free delivery.

Also available is

Le Morte D’Arthur, ed.  Janet Cowan.  London: Penguin Classics, 1977.  ISBN (vol. I) 9780140430431, (vol. II) 9780140430448

This is a two-volume modern-spelling edition of Caxton‘s version.  Differences between what Caxton printed and Winchester manuscript (the basis of Cooper’s edition) are minor, making this the most readily available unabridged modern edition.  

Malory: Complete Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.  ISBN 9780192812179.

The standard scholarly edition, in original spelling.  If you’re interested in the linguistic side of Malory, this is the one for you, though it is not as helpfully annotated as Cooper’s edition.  

Introduction to Old English

The text we will be using is

Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson.   A Guide to Old English, 8th ed.  London: Blackwell, 2012.  ISBN 9780470671078

I’ll be referring to it as ‘Mitchell & Robinson’ or just ‘M&R’.  It’s readily available from The Book Depository and elsewhere.  If you acquire a copy early, don’t be daunted by the grammar sections, which can look forbidding to the uninitiated.  I’ve got a tried and trustworthy method of easing us into the technicalities.  If you do have a look and find yourself intrigued or puzzled by anything you see, feel free to pop any questions or observations my way.  I’m always up for some chat about Old English!