This is a lovely thread from Nadia that I think is a really good example of what ASNC does different from other degrees, so let’s dive in to the history of Gawain a little bit, with some Hapax Legomena and linguistical joy thrown in too! (1/lots) https://twitter.com/cambtweeteng/status/1381333803294199809

So Gawain is a little too late for ASNC, given that it’s a Middle English work (a distinct language from Old English). However, unlike its contemporaries, it features – as Nadia notes – lots of influence from Old Norse. H/T to @Department_ASNC Gersum Project charting this.

This is crucial for lots of reasons, but the most interesting one in terms of ASNC is it evidences something we call the “Old English Revival” – a 13th c tendency in the north of England to use the poetic style of Old English pre-conquest poetry. This is v controversial.

Evidence is mostly bad (so few surviving poems), so it’s really hard to tell if this is a revival or a continuation. Nevertheless the dominance of alliteration (much more logical in Old English, a case language making end rhyme hard) & other styles evidences a clear connection.

This raises loads of questions. It didn’t survive or last (Chaucerian couplets are seen as the first English poetry for a reason!) but is this just because the North was less wealthy, so less able to produce and circulate texts? Was it a small poetic movement? What was the goal?

The theory I’m most interested in is that Arthurian legend was used as a method of social resistance to Norman conquest, in Welsh and English texts. But here’s where ASNC excels: studying a culture set rather than a subject gives us a lot more opportunity to ask these questions.

Anyway; it radically challenges the traditional narrative that Norman Conquest was a major sea change for ‘England’. We can back this up with the history of the Northern rebellion, harrying of the North by William, & a long history of Northumbrian/Mercian independence from Wessex

Language is useful too. Take for example @cambtweeteng’s “enker”, ‘bright’, which is a lovely example of the cultural fluidity of 14th c England. It *could* derive from Old Norse “einkar”, ‘very’. But it might also be from Old French “encre vert”, ‘bright green ink’.

ASNC is wonderful because it looks at learning in a completely different way. We don’t start from a subject and look at the limits, we start with some dates and places and look at everything we can see there. Literature, language, history, archaeology, geography, stats, sociology

You name it, we dabble in it. I find this an incredibly freeing way to look at the past. You don’t need to be good at everything, you just learn the tools to find out everything about what you’re interested in. No knowledge expected, so it’s a new way of learning in many ways!

We also have some great Hapax Legomena. My fave is Old English “uhtceare”, ‘before dawn cares’, for the feelings of anxiety you feel waking at the start of a day before sunrise.

Best word is undeniably “Neorxnawang”, an Old English word for ‘paradise’.

Anyway, I’ll stop my ramblings. But if you look at a text that looks indecipherable sometimes and at other times like looking at a poem through frosted glass and get curious about *how* and *why* it’s so close and so far, and want to immerse in a time not a subject, try ASNC!