   #copyright

Anglo-Saxon literature

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500 and
before (including Roman Britain); Literature types

   The initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle, likely scribed around
   1150, is one of the major sources of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
   Enlarge
   The initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle, likely scribed around
   1150, is one of the major sources of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

   Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses
   literature written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English) during the 600-year
   Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5th century to the Norman
   Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry,
   hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles,
   riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts
   from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and
   specialist research.

   Some of the most important works from this period include the poem
   Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The
   Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of early English history. The
   poem Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century is one of the oldest surviving
   written texts in English.

   Anglo-Saxon literature has gone through different periods of
   research—in the 19th and early 20th centuries the focus was on the
   Germanic roots of English, later the literary merits were examined, and
   today the interest is with paleography questions and the physical
   manuscripts themselves such as dating, place of origin, authorship, and
   looking at the connections between Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest of
   Europe in the Middle Ages.

Overview

   History of England
   Prehistoric Britain (before AD 43)
         Roman Britain ( 43– 410)
   Anglo-Saxon England (ca. 410– 1066)
         Anglo-Normans ( 1066– 1154)
          Plantagenets ( 1154– 1485)
    House of Lancaster ( 1399– 1471)
         House of York ( 1461– 1485)
        House of Tudor ( 1485– 1603)
       House of Stuart ( 1603– 1714)
        United Kingdom (after 1707)

   A large number of manuscripts remain from the 600 year Anglo-Saxon
   period, with most written during the last 300 years (9th–11th century),
   in both Latin and the vernacular. Old English literature is among the
   oldest vernacular languages to be written down. Old English began, in
   written form, as a practical necessity in the aftermath of the Danish
   invasions—church officials were concerned that because of the drop in
   Latin literacy no one could read their work. Likewise King Alfred the
   Great ( 849– 899), wanting to restore English culture, lamented the
   poor state of Latin education:

          "So general was [educational] decay in England that there were
          very few on this side of the Humber who could...translate a
          letter from Latin into English; and I believe there were not
          many beyond the Humber" ( Pastoral Care, introduction).

   King Alfred noted that while very few could read Latin, many could
   still read Old English. He thus proposed that students be educated in
   Old English, and those who excelled would go on to learn Latin. In this
   way many of the texts that have survived are typical teaching and
   student-oriented texts.

   In total there are about 400 surviving manuscripts containing Old
   English text, 189 of them considered major. These manuscripts have been
   highly prized by collectors since the 16th century, both for their
   historic value and for their aesthetic beauty of uniformly spaced
   letters and decorative elements.

   Not all of the texts can be fairly called literature, such as lists of
   names or aborted pen trials. However those that can present a sizable
   body of work, listed here in descending order of quantity: sermons and
   saints' lives (the most numerous), biblical translations; translated
   Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and
   narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical
   works on grammar, medicine, geography; lastly, but not least important,
   poetry.

   Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with some exceptions.

   Research in the 20th century has focused on dating the manuscripts
   (19th-century scholars tended to date them older than modern
   scholarship has found); locating where the manuscripts were
   created—there were seven major scriptoria from which they originate:
   Winchester, Exeter, Worcester, Abingdon, Durham, and two Canterbury
   houses Christ Church and St. Augustine; and identifying the regional
   dialects used: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon (the latter
   being the main dialect).

Old English Poetry

   In this illustration from page 46 of the Caedmon (or Junius)
   manuscript, an angel is shown guarding the gates of paradise.
   Enlarge
   In this illustration from page 46 of the Caedmon (or Junius)
   manuscript, an angel is shown guarding the gates of paradise.

   Old English poetry is of two types, the heroic Germanic pre-Christian
   and the Christian. It has survived for the most part in four
   manuscripts. The first manuscript is called the Junius manuscript (also
   known as the Caedmon manuscript), which is an illustrated poetic
   anthology. The second manuscript is called the Exeter Book, also an
   anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there
   in the 11th century. The third manuscript is called the Vercelli Book,
   a mix of poetry and prose; how it came to be in Vercelli, Italy, no one
   knows, and is a matter of debate. The fourth manuscript is called the
   Nowell Codex, also a mixture of poetry and prose.

   Old English poetry had no known rules or system left to us by the
   Anglo-Saxons, everything we know about it is based on modern analysis.
   The first widely accepted theory was by Eduard Sievers (1885) in which
   he distinguished five distinct alliterative patterns. The theory of
   John C. Pope (1942) uses musical notations which has had some
   acceptance; every few years a new theory arises and the topic continues
   to be hotly debated.

   The most popular and well known understanding of Old English poetry
   continues to be Sievers' alliterative verse. The system is based upon
   accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic
   accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme;
   any one of the five types can be used in any verse. The system was
   inherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older
   Germanic languages. Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English
   poetry are the Kenning, an often formulaic phrase that describes one
   thing in terms of another, e.g. in Beowulf, the sea is called the
   swan's road and Litotes, a dramatic understatement employed by the
   author for ironic effect.

   Old English poetry was an oral craft, and our understanding of it in
   written form is incomplete; for example, we know that the poet
   (referred to as the Scop) could be accompanied by a harp, and there may
   be other aural traditions we are not aware of.

   Poetry represents the smallest amount of the surviving Old English
   text, but Anglo-Saxon culture had a rich tradition of oral story
   telling, just not much was written down or survived.

The poets

   Most Old English poets are anonymous; twelve are known by name from
   Medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular
   works to us today with any certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred, and
   Cynewulf. Of these, only Caedmon, Bede, and Alfred have known
   biographies.

   Caedmon is the best-known and considered the father of Old English
   poetry. He lived at the abbey of Whitby in Northumbria in the 7th
   century. Only a single nine line poem remains, called Hymn, which is
   also the oldest surviving text in English:

                Now let us praise the Guardian of the Kingdom of Heaven
                the might of the Creator and the thought of his mind,
                the work of the glorious Father, how He, the eternal Lord
                established the beginning of every wonder.
                For the sons of men, He, the Holy Creator
                first made heaven as a roof, then the
                Keeper of mankind, the eternal Lord
                God Almighty afterwards made the middle world
                the earth, for men.

                      --(Caedmon, Hymn, Leningrad manuscript)

   Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne (d. 709), is known through William of
   Malmesbury who said he performed secular songs while accompanied by a
   harp. Much of his Latin prose has survived, but none of his Old English
   remains.

   Cynewulf has proven to be a difficult figure to identify, but recent
   research suggests he was from the early part of the 9th century to
   which a number of poems are attributed including The Fates of the
   Apostles and Elene (both found in the Vercelli Book), and Christ II and
   Juliana (both found in the Exeter Book).

Heroic poems

   First page of Beowulf, contained in the damaged Nowell Codex.
   Enlarge
   First page of Beowulf, contained in the damaged Nowell Codex.

   The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals with
   the Germanic heroic past. The longest (3,182 lines), and most
   important, is Beowulf, which appears in the damaged Nowell Codex. It
   tells the story of the legendary Geatish hero Beowulf who is the title
   character. The story is set in Scandinavia, in Sweden and Denmark, and
   the tale likewise probably is of Scandinavian origin. The story is
   biographical and sets the tone for much of the rest of Old English
   poetry. It has achieved national epic status, on the same level as the
   Iliad, and is of interest to historians, anthropologists, literary
   critics, and students the world over.

   Beyond Beowulf, other heroic poems exist. Two heroic poems have
   survived in fragments: The Fight at Finnsburh, a retelling of one of
   the battle scenes in Beowulf (although this relation to Beowulf is much
   debated), and Waldere, a version of the events of the life of Walter of
   Aquitaine. Two other poems mention heroic figures: Widsith is believed
   to be very old in parts, dating back to events in the 4th century
   concerning Eormanric and the Goths, and contains a catalogue of names
   and places associated with valiant deeds. Deor is a lyric, in the style
   of Consolation of Philosophy, applying examples of famous heroes,
   including Weland and Eormanric, to the narrator's own case.

   The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains various heroic poems inserted
   throughout. The earliest from 937 is called The Battle of Brunanburh,
   which celebrates the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and
   Norse. There are five shorter poems: capture of the Five Boroughs
   (942); coronation of King Edgar (973); death of King Edgar (975); death
   of Prince Alfred (1036); and death of King Edward the Confessor (1065).

   The 325 line poem Battle of Maldon celebrates Earl Byrhtnoth and his
   men who fell in battle against the Vikings in 991. It is considered one
   of the finest, but both the beginning and end are missing and the only
   manuscript was destroyed in a fire in 1731. A well known speech is near
   the end of the poem:

                Thought shall be the harder, the heart the keener, courage
                the greater, as our strength lessens.
                Here lies our leader all cut down, the valiant man in the
                dust;
                always may he mourn who now things to turn away from this
                warplay.
                I am old, I will not go away, but I plan to lie down by
                the side of my lord, by the man so dearly loved.

                      --(Battle of Maldon)

   Old English heroic poetry was handed down orally from generation to
   generation. As Christianity began to appear, retellers often recast the
   tales of Christianity into the older heroic stories.

Wisdom poetry

   Related to the heroic tales are a number of short poems from the Exeter
   Book which have come to be described as "Wisdom poetry". They are
   lyrical and Boethian in their description of the up and down fortunes
   of life. Gloomy in mood is The Ruin, which tells of the decay of a once
   glorious city of Roman Britain (Britain fell into decline after the
   Romans departed in the early 5th c.), and The Wanderer, in which an
   older man talks about an attack that happened in his youth, where his
   close friends and kin were all killed; memories of the slaughter have
   remained with him all his life. He questions the wisdom of the
   impetuous decision to engage a possibly superior fighting force: the
   wise man engages in warfare to preserve civil society, and must not
   rush into battle but seek out allies when the odds may be against him.
   This poet finds little glory in bravery for bravery's sake. The
   Seafarer is the story of a somber exile from home on the sea, from
   which the only hope of redemption is the joy of heaven. Other wisdom
   poems include Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, and The Husband's
   Message. King Alfred the Great wrote a wisdom poem over the course of
   his reign based loosely on the neoplatonic philosophy of Boethius
   called the Lays of Boethius.

Classical and Latin poetry

   Several Old English poems are adaptations of late classical
   philosophical texts. The longest is a 10th century translation of
   Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy contained in the Cotton manuscript.
   Another is The Phoenix in the Exeter Book, an allegorization of the De
   ave phoenice by Lactantius.

   Other short poems derived from the Latin bestiary tradition such as The
   Panther, The Whale and The Partridge.

Christian poetry

Saints' Lives

   The Vercelli Book and Exeter Book contain four long narrative poems of
   saints' lives, or hagiography. In Vercelli are Andreas and Elene and in
   Exeter are Guthlac and Juliana.

   Andreas is 1,722 lines long and is the closest of the surviving Old
   English poems to Beowulf in style and tone. It is the story of Saint
   Andrew and his journey to rescue Saint Matthew from the Mermedonians.
   Elene is the story of Saint Helena (mother of Constantine) and her
   discovery of the True Cross. The cult of the True Cross was popular in
   Anglo-Saxon England and this poem was instrumental.

   Guthlac is actually two poems about English Saint Guthlac (7th
   century). Juliana is the story of the virgin martyr Juliana of
   Nicomedia.

Biblical paraphrases

   The Junius manuscript contains three paraphrases of Old Testament
   texts. These were re-wordings of Biblical passages in Old English, not
   exact translations, but paraphrasing, sometimes into beautiful poetry
   in its own right. The first and longest is of Genesis. The second is of
   Exodus. The third is Daniel.

   The Nowell Codex contains a Biblical poetic paraphrase, which appears
   right after Beowulf, called Judith, a retelling of the story of Judith.
   This is not to be confused with Aelfric's homily Judith, which retells
   the same Biblical story in alliterative prose.

   The Psalter Psalms 51-150 are preserved, following a prose version of
   the first 50 Psalms. It is believed there was once a complete psalter
   based on evidence, but only the first 150 have survived.

   There are a number of verse translations of the Gloria in Excelsis, the
   Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed, as well as a number of hymns
   and proverbs.

Christian poems

   In addition to Biblical paraphrases are a number of original religious
   poems, mostly lyrical (non-narrative).

   The Exeter Book contains a series of poems entitled Christ, sectioned
   into Christ I, Christ II and Christ III.

   Considered one of the most beautiful of all Old English poems is Dream
   of the Rood, contained in the Vercelli Book. It is a dream vision of
   Christ on the cross, with the cross personified, speaking thus:

                "I endured much hardship up on that hill. I saw the God of
                hosts stretched out cruelly. Darkness had covered with
                clouds the body of the Lord, the bright radiance. A shadow
                went forth, dark under the heavens. All creation wept,
                mourned the death of the king. Christ was on the cross."

                      --(Dream of the Rood)

   The dreamer resolves to trust in the cross, and the dream ends with a
   vision of heaven.

   There are a number of religious debate poems. The longest is Christ and
   Satan in the Junius manuscript, it deals with the conflict between
   Christ and Satan during the forty days in the desert. Another debate
   poem is Solomon and Saturn, surviving in a number of textual fragments,
   Saturn is portrayed as a magician debating with the wise king Solomon.

Other poems

   Other poetic forms exist in Old English including riddles, short
   verses, gnomes, and mnemonic poems for remembering long lists of names.

   The Exeter Book has a collection of ninety-five riddles. The answers
   are not supplied, a number of them to this day remain a puzzle, and
   some of the answers are obscene.

   There are short verses found in the margins of manuscripts which offer
   practical advice There are remedies against the loss of cattle, how to
   deal with a delayed birth, swarms of bees, etc.. the longest is called
   Nine Herbs Charm and is probably of pagan origin.

   There are a group of mnemonic poems designed to help memorise lists and
   sequences of names and to keep objects in order. These poems are named
   Menologium, The Fates of the Apostles, The Rune Poem, The Seasons for
   Fasting, and the Instructions for Christians.

Specific features of Anglo-Saxon poetry

Simile and Metaphor

   Anglo-Saxon poetry is marked by the comparative rarity of similes. This
   is a particular feature of Anglo-Saxon verse style, and is a
   consequence of both its structure and the rapidity with which images
   are deployed, to be unable to effectively support the expanded simile.
   As an example of this, the epic Beowulf contains at best five similes,
   and these are of the short variety. This can be contrasted sharply with
   the strong and extensive dependence that Anglo-Saxon poetry has upon
   metaphor, particularly that afforded by the use of kennings.

Elaboration

   It is also a feature of the fast-paced dramatic style of Anglo-Saxon
   poetry that it is not prone, in the way that, say, Celtic literature of
   the period was, to overly elaborate decoration. Where typically a
   Celtic poet of the time might use 3 or 4 similes to make a point,
   typically an Anglo-Saxon poet might reference a kenning, before moving
   swiftly on.

Old English prose

   The amount of surviving Old English prose is much greater than the
   amount of poetry. Of the surviving prose, sermons and Latin
   translations of religious works are the majority. Old English prose
   first appears in the 9th century, and continues to be recorded through
   the 12th century.

Christian prose

   The most widely known author of Old English was King Alfred, who
   translated many books from Latin into Old English. These translations
   include: Gregory the Great's The Pastoral Care, a manual for priests on
   how to conduct their duties; The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius;
   and The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine. Alfred was also resposible for
   a translation of the fifty Psalms into Old English. Other important Old
   English translations completed by associates of Alfred include: The
   History of the World by Orosius, a companion piece for Augustine of
   Hippo's The City of God; the Dialogues of Gregory the Great; and the
   Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede.

   Ælfric of Eynsham, wrote in the late 10th and early 11th century. He
   was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, which
   were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. He also
   wrote a number of saints lives, an Old English work on time-reckoning,
   pastoral letters, translations of the first six books of the Bible,
   glosses and translations of other parts of the Bible including
   Proverbs, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus.

   In the same category as Aelfric, and a contemporary, was Wulfstan II,
   archbishop of York. His sermons were highly stylistic. His best known
   work is Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in which he blames the sins of the British
   for the Viking invasions. He wrote a number of clerical legal texts
   Institutes of Polity and Canons of Edgar.

   One of the earliest Old English texts in prose is the Martyrology,
   information about saints and martyrs according to their anniversaries
   and feasts in the church calendar. It has survived in six fragments. It
   is believed to date from the 9th century by an anonymous Mercian
   author.

   The oldest collection of church sermons are the Blickling homilies in
   the Vercelli Book and dates from the 10th century.

   There are a number of saint's lives prose works. Beyond those written
   by Aelfric are the prose life of Saint Guthlac (Vercelli Book), the
   life of Saint Margaret and the life of Saint Chad. There are four lives
   in the Julius manuscript: Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Saint Mary of
   Egypt, Saint Eustace and Saint Euphrosyne.

   There are many Old English translations of many parts of the Bible.
   Aelfric translated the first six books of the Bible (the Hexateuch).
   There is a translation of the Gospels. The most popular was the Gospel
   of Nicodemus, others included "..the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Vindicta
   salvatoris, Vision of Saint Paul and the Apocalypse of Thomas".

   One of the largest bodies of Old English text is found in the legal
   texts collected and saved by the religious houses. These include many
   kinds of texts: records of donations by nobles; wills; documents of
   emancipation; lists of books and relics; court cases; guild rules. All
   of these texts provide valuable insights into the social history of
   Anglo-Saxon times, but are also of literary value. For example, some of
   the court case narratives are interesting for their use of rhetoric.

Secular prose

   The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably started in the time of King
   Alfred and continued for over 300 years as a historical record of
   Anglo-Saxon history.

   A single example of a Classical romance has survived, it is a fragment
   of a Latin translation of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus (220 AD),
   from the 11th century.

   A monk who was writing in Old English at the same time as Aelfric and
   Wulfstan was Byrhtferth of Ramsey, whose books Handboc and Manual were
   studies of mathematics and rhetoric.

   Aelfric wrote two neo-scientific works, Hexameron and Interrogationes
   Sigewulfi, dealing with the stories of Creation. He also wrote a
   grammar and glossary in Old English called Latin, later used by
   students interested in learning Old French because it had been glossed
   in Old French.

   There are many surviving rules and calculations for finding feast days,
   and tables on calculating the tides and the season of the moon.

   In the Nowell Codex is the text of The Wonders of the East which
   includes a remarkable map of the world, and other illustrations. Also
   contained in Nowell is Alexander's Letter to Aristotle. Because this is
   the same manuscript that contains Beowulf, some scholars speculate it
   may have been a collection of materials on exotic places and creatures.

   There are a number of interesting medical works. There is a translation
   of Apuleius's Herbarium with striking illustrations, found together
   with Medicina de Quadrupedibus. A second collection of texts is Bald's
   Leechbook, a 10th century book containing herbal and even some surgical
   cures. A third collections is known as the Lacnunga, which relies of
   charms, incantations, and white magic.

   Anglo-Saxon legal texts are a large and important part of the overall
   corpus. By the 12th century they had been arranged into two large
   collections (see Textus Roffensis). They include laws of the kings,
   beginning with those of Aethelbert of Kent, and texts dealing with
   specific cases and places in the country. An interesting example is
   Gerefa which outlines the duties of a reeve on a large manor estate.
   There is also a large volume of legal documents related to religious
   houses.

Historiography

   Old English literature did not disappear in 1066 with the Norman
   Conquest. Many sermons and works continued to be read and used in part
   or whole up through the 14th century, and were further catalogued and
   organised. During the Reformation, when monastic libraries were
   dispersed, the manuscripts were collected by antiquarians and scholars.
   These included Laurence Nowell, Matthew Parker, Robert Bruce Cotton and
   Humfrey Wanley. In the 17th century begun a tradition of Old English
   literature dictionaries and references. The first was William Somner's
   Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (1659). Lexicographer Joseph
   Bosworth began a dictionary in the 19th century which was completed by
   Thomas Northcote Toller in 1898 called An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, which
   was updated by Alistair Campbell in 1972.

   Because Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be
   written down, nineteenth century scholars searching for the roots of
   European "national culture" (see Romantic Nationalism) took special
   interest in studying Anglo-Saxon literature, and Old English became a
   regular part of university curriculum. Since WWII there has been
   increasing interest in the manuscripts themselves— Neil Ker, a
   paleographer, published the groundbreaking Catalogue of Manuscripts
   Containing Anglo-Saxon in 1957, and by 1980 nearly all Anglo-Saxon
   manuscript texts were in print. J.R.R. Tolkien is credited with
   creating a movement to look at Old English as a subject of literary
   theory in his seminal lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
   (1936).

   Old English literature has had an influence on modern literature. Some
   of the best-known translations include William Morris' translation of
   Beowulf and Ezra Pound's translation of The Seafarer. The influence of
   the poetry can be seen in modern poets T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W.
   H. Auden. Much of the subject matter and terminology of the heroic
   poetry can be seen in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and many
   others.

Quotes

     * Jorge Luis Borges, from The Aleph, and Other Stories, 1933-1969
       (1969):

          "I knew that at home, on a certain top shelf, I had copies of
          Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. When
          the students came the next Saturday morning, we began reading
          these two books. We skipped grammar as much as we could and
          pronounced the words like German. All at once, we fell in love
          with a sentence in which Rome (Romeburh) was mentioned. We got
          drunk on these words and rushed down Peru Street shouting them
          at the top of our voices. And so we set out on a long adventure.
          I had always thought of English literature as the richest in the
          world; the discovery now of a secret chamber at the very
          threshold of that literature came to me as an additional gift.
          Personally, I knew that the adventure would be an endless one,
          and that I could go on studying Old English for the rest of my
          days."

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