The Style of the Old English Metrical Charms

This seminar is centered around a work-in-progress book chapter exploring the Old English metrical charms, a set of twelve vivid and enigmatic magic spells written down in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The seminar will be a chance to explore (and give feedback on) the chapter’s central argument, which is that the metrical charms were composed in a previously unidentified early medieval English poetic style, close to but distinct from that of classical Old English verse texts like Beowulf – defined by a limited, specific set of five permissible deviations from ‘traditional’ meter that accommodate lush ornamentation and prescribed magical language.

Register here to attend.

Professor Batten will also deliver an afternoon lecture at 4:00pm in Kaplan Hall 193. See event details here: Whole, Holy, Healthy: Sickness and the Body in the Medieval North Atlantic.

Both events are co-sponsored by UCLA’s CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and the Colloquium for Early Medieval Studies.

Caroline (Caz) Batten is an Assistant Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. A scholar of Old English and Old Norse language and literature, they have published widely on gender and sexuality, sickness and health, the history of medicine, and somatic emotion in medieval texts. Their short book Health and the Body in Early Medieval England is forthcoming as a Cambridge Element in 2024.

Questions about the event?
Email: englishevents@ucla.edu