English 306 - SEM: FOUNDATIONS/CELTIC EUROPE

Celts are the only Indo-European-speaking people to adopt the Old European cult of the great mother as their dominant divinity, creating in the fourth century BC the La Tene complex in response to contacts with Etruscans, Greeks and Romans. La Tene replicated itself in Gaul, Britain and Ireland for centuries into the first millennium AD, ultimately yielding such manuscript treasures as the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne Gospels, as well as vernacular poems and sagas depicting two parallel universes, this world and Annwn 'the Unworld', neither home to the gods nor unambiguously land of the dead, but rather a preternatural realm whose inhabitants interact in love or violence with humans. We will examine material culture, historical records in Greek and Latin, and literary and religious texts composed in several languages: Etruscan, Gaulish, Old Irish, medieval Welsh, Old and Middle English, and Old French.

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores