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OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (1._old_english_literatur.doc)

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

        Old English Literature, also called Anglo Saxon literature was written during 600 year Anglo Saxon period of Britain ( mid 5th century – to Norman Conquest 1066). Anglo-Saxon is the name given to the people and sometimes the Old English language after the colonisation of Britain in the fifth century AD by tribes of Germanic origin: the Angles (who conquered the north), the Saxons (who conquered the south) and the Jutes (who conquered the southeast).

        Old English was spoken in very different dialects until 1066, when England was invaded by William the Conqueror & the Normans. It was a heavily inflected language, that is, the words changed form to indicate person, number, tense, case, & mood, & its vocabulary was almost entirely Germanic. After conversion to Christianity became more general in the 7th century, some of the Old English poems, until then passed on only orally, were written down, and probably modified, by monks. Only about 30 000 lines of these poems have survived.

        For about 500 years, almost all Old English verse had the following characteristics:

1. each line - made up of 2 half-lines, separated by a caesura (a pause) and joined by alliteration;

1. each half-line consisted of two 'feet' (a 'foot' contains a number of unstressed syllables and a stressed syllable);

1. the alliteration linking the two half-lines fell on the stressed syllables (at least one of the main stresses in the first half-line began with the same consonant sound as the first main stress in the second half-line);

1. words beginning with the same consonant had the same sound and therefore alliterated (unlike in modern English);

a word beginning with a vowel was regarded as 'alliterating' with any other word beginning with a vowel even if that vowel sound was not the same.

        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 invasion - church officials were concerned that because of the drop in Latin literacy no one could read their work. 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. The genres that can be found in Old English literature are : epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles and others.

Old English Poetry        

        In Old English poetry we can find: Narrative secular poetry (so called heroic poems), Lyrical secular poetry (elegial poetry), religious poetry, works written in Latin and shorter poetical works (like riddles and charms).

        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 storytelling, of which little has survived in written form.

        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.

Features of Anglo Saxon poetry

        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.

Anglo-Saxon poetry has a fast-paced dramatic style, and accordingly is not prone to the comparatively expansive decoration that may be found in, say, Celtic literature of the period. Where a Celtic poet of the time might use 3 or 4 similes to make a point, an Anglo-Saxon poet might insert a single kenning before moving swiftly on.

Narrative Secular poetry

        The longest and the most important heroic poem is Beowulf. The poem tells the story of a hero Beowulf who is the main character. Besides Beowulf there exist other heroic poems like: The Fight at Finnsburh - retelling of one of the battle scenes in Beowulf , and Waldere, a version of the events of the life of Walter of Aquitaine.

Battle of Maldon is the greatest battle poem in English. It is an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poem by an unknown poet. It describes a battle between the English and Viking warriors from Denmark in AD 991 at Maldon in Essex on the River Blackwater, then called the River Pantan.

The Danish invaders are on the island of Northey at the mouth of the river waiting for the tide to go out. Byrhtnoth, the earl of Essex, is at the head of the English warriors on the mainland. A messenger from the Danes offers peace if they pay a sum of money. Byrhtnoth, however, rejects the offer. Then the tide begins to go out and Byrhtnoth, far too confident, is tricked into letting the enemy cross to the mainland.

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.

        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.

Lyrical Secular Poetry

        This poetry is also called sentimental or elegial poetry and it reflects the various fortunes of life. The most famous are The Ruin, the Wanderer, the Seafarer, the Wife's Lament, and the Husband's Message.

        The poem The Ruin is very gloomy in mood. It tells of the decay of a once glorious city of Roman Britain. Part of the poem has been lost due the pages being damaged by fire. Although the poem shows no overt signs of Christianity, it embodies some Christian ideals in that it describes the disappearance of a society that placed an emphasis on hedonism and materialism, and could be the work of an early Anglo-Saxon Christian. The poet does make several references to Wyrd which is an element of northern Germanic pagan mythology.  

        The Seafarer is a 124 line poem that deals with the experience of an outsider. Indeed the poet's condition of exile has many parallels with the modern idea of the artist's estrangement from society. It begins with a lament of suffering until the speaker understands that he prefers to live a life of hardship on the waves rather than having security of land that he considers a pointless vanity.

Religious Poetry

        Cćdmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval sources, and one of only three for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived.

        Cćdmon's only known surviving work is Cćdmon's Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.

        A legend says that there was a festival where all people should sing a song which would worship God; because Cædmon was too humble thinking that he is unable to sing went away of the festival; in dream God asked him to sing for him - so the Hymn of creation was written.

Cynewulf is famous for his religious compositions, and is regarded as one of the preeminent figures of Old English Christian poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that are interwoven into the four poems which comprise his scholastically recognized corpus. These poems are: The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene, and Christ II (also referred to as The Ascension). Unlike his literary predecessor, Caedmon, whose biography is solely derived from Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Cynewulf's life is a veritable mystery to scholars. We cannot be sure whether he really existed.

        Another important person in Old English literature  is Venerable Bede. He was a Benedictine monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth  He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The father of English history".

        Bede's writings are classed as scientific, historical and theological, reflecting the range of his writings from music and metrics to Scripture commentaries. He was proficient in patristic literature, and quotes Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace and other classical writers, but with some disapproval. He knew some Greek, but no Hebrew. His Latin is generally clear and without affectation, and he was a skillful story-teller. However, his style can be considerably more obscure in his Biblical commentaries.

        The most important and best known of his works is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, giving in five books and 400 pages the history of England, ecclesiastical and political, from the time of Caesar to the date of its completion (731). The first twenty-one chapters, treating of the period before the mission of Augustine of Canterbury, are compiled from earlier writers such as Orosius, Gildas, Prosper of Aquitaine, the letters of Pope Gregory I and others, with the insertion of legends and traditions.

        His other historical works included lives of the abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, as well as lives in verse and prose of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. In his Letter on the Death of Bede, Cuthbert, monk and later Abbot of Jarrow, describes Bede as still writing on his deathbed, working on a translation into Old English of the Gospel of John and on Isidore of Seville's On the Nature of Things.

Shorter poetical works

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

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.

        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 responsible 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.

        Alfred the Great was the most prominent king of Wessex. In his times the ANGLO SAXON CHRONICLE was probably started. It contains the list of historical events, a diary from 9th till 11th century and it is of great literary value. During Alfred's reign the country was flourishing, he was supporting education and culture.