Old English Literature

Anglo-Saxon Literature
(650-1066)
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 Anglo-Saxon Literature (650-1066)
Is it Part of English Literature
German Ally
Democratic Desire
Aristocratic Anglo Norman vs. Saxons
Philological Proof
Essential German Character of English Language
Gothic Fashion
Impersistence of language
Prologue to English Literature
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 England before the Anglo Saxons
Celtic 850 BC
• Brythons:Denoting the southern group of Celtic languages,
consisting of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.
• Gaels…Ireland
Gaelic Language
Druids…priests who carried legends through heroic poems
orally
Romans 50 BC-450 AD
Introduced Christianity Latin Language
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Picts (northern Celts) from Scotland, Scots from Ireland (until
AD1400 the word ‘Scot’ meant an Irishman) and Anglo-Saxons
from northern Germany and Scandinavia, all came to plunder
the accumulated wealth of Roman Britain.
The Romans began to withdraw from Britain in AD 383. By AD
410 all Roman troops had been withdrawn, leaving the cities
of Britain and the remaining Romano-British to fend for
themselves.

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 Anglo Saxons 450-1066
Germanic Tribes(SE Russia)
• Before they occupied Britain they lived along the coasts of Sweden and
Denmark, and the land which they occupied was called Engle-land.
• These tribes were fearless, adventurous and brave, and during the later
years of Roman occupation of Britain, they kept the British coast in terror.
Anglos Saxons Jutes
Paganism
Danish Invasions (9th-12th Cent.) Vikings
Around the end of the 8th century, Anglo-Saxon history tells of many
Viking raids. These marked the start of a long struggle between the
Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings for control of Britain.
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In the 9th century, the English king Alfred the
Great stopped the Vikings taking over all of England. He
agreed to peace with them and some Vikings settled
down to live in their own area of eastern England, called
the Danelaw.

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 Christian Latinist
The Christian communities established in the
Roman province survived in Western Britain
during the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries.
In the late sixth century, the Pope ordered that
Augustine of Canterbury lead the Gregorian
Mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity.
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 Work of Clerks, monks
Christian Literature
Social Background
Settlement
Uprooting of Primitive Myths
Disjointing with Scandinavians
Religious poetry flourished in northern England-Northumbria-
throughout the 8th century, though most of it has survived only
in West Saxon transcriptions of the late 10th century.
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Aldhelm (639?-709)
West Saxon abbot of Malmesbury, the most learned
teacher of 7th-century Wessex, a pioneer in the art
of Latin verse among the Anglo-Saxons, and the
author of numerous writings in Latin verse and
prose.
It includes as examples 100 aenigmata (riddles) of
Aldhelm’s own invention in Latin hexameters.
Heavy Decorated Style
Violent Metaphors
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The Venerable Bede (672-735)
a monk of the Northumbrian monastery & widely
recognised as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar.
The Father of English History
Treatise on Metre Natural History Martyrlogy
• His most famous work is ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis
Anglorum’ or ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People’ completed in 731 AD.
• Bede details the history of the conversion of the English to
Christianity from the time of St Augustine through to the
early eighth century.
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Alcuin of York (c. 730-804)
An English churchman, educator, statesman, and
liturgist.
Besides establishing his school, which became a
center of Western culture, Alcuin wrote important
political and liturgical works.

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 Anglo Saxon Poetry
Role of Scops
Warriors, travelers and reporters. Scops were ancient
performers but they did not perform for pleasure; they
performed to inform and to spread news.
Recited long Epic poems in the halls of great kings.
Main Features of Anglo Saxon Poems
• Caesuras-pause
• Alliteration
• Kennings-metaphorical phrase
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 Junius MS (4 poems Biblical subjects)
The Junius Manuscript is one of the four most
significant manuscripts of Old English verse.
It contains the sole surviving copies of four long poems
on biblical themes, which are called Genesis, Exodus,
Daniel and Christ and Satan by modern editors.
The manuscript owes its current designation to the
Anglo-Dutch scholar Franciscus Junius, who was the
first to edit its contents and who bequeathed it to
Oxford University.
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Caedmon: First to use English
first Old English Christian poet
The Venerable Bede first refers to Cademon, who
according to him tended to the animals. one
evening as he fell asleep amongst the animals in
his care, Caedmon is said to have dreamt that an
apparition appeared before him telling him to
sing of the principium creaturarum, or ‘the
beginning of created things’
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• Throughout the remainder of his life his
more learned brethren presented Scripture
to him, and all that he heard he
reproduced in vernacular poetry.
• The original hymn—extant in 17
manuscripts, some in the poet’s
Northumbrian dialect, some in other Old
English dialects—set the pattern for
almost the whole art of Anglo-Saxon verse.
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Codex Exoniensis (The Exeter Book)
A 10th Century book
Only four collections of Old English verse exist, out of
which the Exeter Book is the largest and most
impressive.
Exeter Book contains elegies, laments, animal poems,
gnomic verses, and religious works, including "The
Wanderer,“ “Widsith” "The Seafarer," "The Ruin,"
"Deor," "The Wife's Lament," "The Husband's Message,"
and over ninety riddles.
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 Pagan Poems/Lyrical & Elegiac poems
Widsith
• Also known as The Traveller's Song, it is a
poem of 143 lines.
• An idealized self-portrait of a scop (minstrel) of
the Germanic heroic age who wandered widely
and was welcomed in many mead halls.
• The poem is divided into three 'catalogues', so-
called ‘thulas’[Lists]
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Deor's Lament
a moving elegy of forty two lines which gives
voice to the suffering of a minstrel or a scop who
has been replaced by a rival after years of service
to his Lord. The speaker’s self consolation takes a
meditative form as he looks back upon five
instances of suffering inflicted upon Germanic
heroes.

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The Seafarer
The 124-line poem is often considered an elegy, since it
appears to be spoken by an old man looking back on his life
and preparing for death. He discusses the solitariness of a
life on the waves, the cold, the danger, and the hardships.
Ezra Pound produced a loose translation of ‘The Seafarer’ in
the early twentieth century.
The Ruined Burg
The poem evokes the former glory of an unnamed ruined
ancient city that some scholars have identified with
modern Bath, by juxtaposing the grand, lively past with the
decaying present.
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The Wanderer
The lament of a solitary man who had once been happy
under the protection of his loved lord but after his lord’s
death is confronted with bitter frozen waves and winter
cold. The thought of his lost happiness makes him
miserable as he journeys into his wasteland of exile.

Ubi sunt (literally "where are... [they]")

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?
[...] How that time has passed away,

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The Lover’s Message
The speaker is a wooden staff on which a message from
an exiled husband to his wife has been carved in runic
letters. The staff tells how it grew as a sapling beside
the sea, never dreaming it would have the power of
speech, until a man carved a secret message on it.
The Maiden's Complaint
The speaker is a woman who has lost her husband's
favour and has been forced to live in a cave in a forest.
After that she decided to undertake a quest to find him,
setting out as a lonely and "Friendless Wanderer".

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 Nowell Codex
It is most famous as the manuscript containing the
unique copy of the epic poem Beowulf. In addition to
this, it contains a fragment of The Life of Saint
Christopher, the texts of Wonders of the East and
Letters of Alexander to Aristotle, and a poetic
translation of Judith, a biblical fragment.
The Beowulf manuscript is known as the Nowell
Codex, gaining its name from the 16th-century owner
and scholar Laurence Nowell.
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The Beowulf poem consists of over three thousand alliterative lines.
It is one of the most important works of Old English literature. The
anonymous poet is referred to by scholars as to the “Beowulf poet.”
The story was set in Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, the
hero leaves his home and comes to the aid of the king of the
Danes, whose mead hall has been under attack by a monster
known as Grendel.
After Beowulf slays Grendel, Grendel’s mother attacks the hall, and
she is also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf then returns to his home
and becomes king.
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Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon but is
mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his
followers cremate his body and erect a tower on a
headland in his memory.
In the 1920s, J R R Tolkien undertook a
translation of Beowulf, which he finished,
but did not publish. It was finally edited by
his son and published in 2014.

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 Vercelli MS
It contains texts of the poem Andreas, two poems by
Cynewulf, The Dream of the Rood, an “Address of the Saved
Soul to the Body”.
There are also 23 prose homilies and a prose life of St.
Guthlac, the Vercelli Guthlac.
The book is so named because it was found in the cathedral
library at Vercelli, northwestern Italy, in 1822.

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 The Songs of War
Ode on the Victory of Brunanburh
Athelstan over Scots
The Battle of Maldon
Fragment of 325 lines
about how Byrhtnoth, the old chief of East
Saxons meet his death
Pagan vs. Christian

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Cynewulf
Known for his religious compositions,
Cynewulf is regarded as one of the pre-eminent
figures of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry.
Author of four poems, Elene and The Fates of
the Apostles are in the Vercelli Book, and The
Ascension (which forms the second part of a
trilogy, Christ, and is also called Christ II) and
Juliana are in the Exeter Book.
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• Elene, a poem of 1,321 lines, is an account of the finding of
the True Cross by St. Helena.
• The Fates of the Apostles, 122 lines, is a versified
martyrology describing the mission and death of each of the
Twelve Apostles.
• Christ II (The Ascension) is a lyrical version of a homily on
the Ascension written by Pope Gregory I the Great. It is part
of a trilogy on Christ by different authors.
• Juliana, a poem of 731 lines, is a retelling of a Latin prose
life of St. Juliana, a maiden who rejected the suit of a
Roman prefect, Eleusius, because of her faith and
consequently was made to suffer numerous torments.
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Riddles
The earliest attested riddles in Anglo-Saxon England are in
Latin, where they are known as enigmata.
The Anglo Saxon riddles are notable for their use of
compound nouns and adjectives.
Thus Latin riddles are precise and intended to test the
wits, the Anglo Saxon riddles are more like a poem,
descriptive, diffuse and vague.
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 Christian Poetry
In addition to Biblical paraphrases are a number
of original religious poems, mostly lyrical.
The Dream of The Rood
the earliest dream poem
a meditation on Christ's crucifixion
In a dream the unknown poet beholds a beautiful tree—the
rood, or cross, on which Christ died. The rood tells him its
own story. Forced to be the instrument of the saviour’s
death, it describes how it suffered the nail wounds, spear
shafts, and insults along with Christ to fulfill God’s will.
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The vision ends, and the man is left with his thoughts.
He gives praise to God for what he has seen and is filled
with hope for eternal life and his desire to once again be
near the glorious Cross.
The longest religious debate poem is Christ and Satan
in the Junius manuscript, which deals with the conflict
between Christ and Satan during the forty days in the
desert.
Another debate poem is Solomon and Saturn, in which
Saturn is portrayed as a magician debating with the
wise king Solomon.
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Beastiaries
A literary genre in the European Middle Ages
consisting of a collection of stories, each based on a
description of certain qualities of an animal, plant, or
even stone.
They are derived from the Greek Physiologus, a text
compiled by an unknown author before the middle of
the 2nd century AD.
The Whale
The Phoenix
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 Didactic Poems
Discourse of the Soul to its Body
Gifts of men
Soloman and saturn

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 Anglo Saxon Prose
Poetry vs. Prose
Poetry archaic and liturgical
Prose follows rules of ordinary speech
Prose is more close to modern English
Prose is modelled on Latin & French texts

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 King Alfred the Great
• Father of English prose
• Attempted to revive learning in his kingdom
after destructive Danish intrusions and bring
within the range of his people the most
significant of Christian thoughts.
• Advocated the use of vernacular as the
Lingua-Franca rather than Latin.
• Orosius’s- ‘History of the World’
• Ecclesiastical History
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• Bring forth translations like that of Orosious’ “History
of the World”, Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History”, Pope
Gregory’s “Pasteural Care” and the soliloquies of St.
Augustine.
• He added passages of moving beauty as inclusions and
illustrations which established his credibility as a prose
writer.
• His most important work is the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
which though not composed by him but under his
influence being maintained as a regularly collected
history of Britain.
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Aelfric (950)
The greatest prose writer till the Elizabethan
time, also the most prolific writer of Anglo-
Saxon sermons.
He translated the first six books of the Bible
His Lives of Saints contains Seven Sleepers of
Ephesus, Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Eustace,
and Saint Euphrosyne.

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• Colloquium of Aelfric is meant for teaching
Latin by conservation.
• His Catholic homilies consists of the
translations made from the works of the
celebrated churchmen. It comprises 120
homilies in three groups of forty
• Aelfric prose unlike Alfred's is intended for
speaking and thus is lucid, straight-forward,
alliterative and poetic in cadence.
Wulfstan (1002)
Sourabh Homilies: “Sermo Lupi”
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Wulfstan (1002)
• The chief literary contemporary of Aelfric is best
known as a homilist.
• Like Aelfric, was an artist and added to the growth
of the forceful impulsive English prose style.
• His best known work is Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in
which he blames the sins of the English for the
Viking invasions.
• He wrote a number of clerical legal texts in
Institutes of Polity and Canons of Edgar.
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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.
The oldest collection of church sermons are the
Blickling homilies in the Vercelli Book.
There are translations of the Gospels, the most
popular was the Gospel of Nicodemus, others
included “...the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Vindicta
salvatoris, Vision of Saint Paul.
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 Anglo-Saxon Secular prose
A single example of a Classical romance is a fragment of
a Latin translation of Apollonius of Tyana by
Philostratus.
Aelfric wrote two scientific works, Hexameron and
Interrogationes Sigewulfi, dealing with the stories of
Creation. He also wrote a grammar and glossary in Old
English called Latin.
In the Nowell Codex is the text of The Wonders of the
East which includes a remarkable map of the world, and
other illustrations.
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