Old English literature

The Old English Period

Anglo-Saxon (old English) literature is based on mythology of Germanic tribes. These history facts are
known thanks to preserved manuscript. It´s literature written in old English c. 650 – c. 1100.
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them
the common Germanic metre; but of their earliest oral poetry, probably used for panegyric, magic,
and short narrative, little or none survives. For nearly a century after the conversion of King
Aethelberht I of Kent to Christianity about 600, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in
their own language. But St. Bede the Venerable, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
(“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon, an
illiterate Northumbrian cowherd, was inspired in a dream to compose a short hymn in praise of the
creation. Only the “Hymn of Creation” survives.

Most Old English poetry is preserved in four manuscripts of the late 10th and early 11th centuries.

Beowulf
It is the oldest surviving Germanic epic and the longest Old English poem. It was likely composed
between 700 and 750.

 Heroic epic poetry

 The oldest Anglo-Saxon literary heritage
 The work is named by the main character – prince and warrior Beowulf

Other great works of Old English poetry include The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Battle of Maldon,
and The Dream of the Rood. This poetry is alliterative; one of its features is the kenning, a
metaphorical phrase used in place of a common noun (e.g., “swan road” for “sea”).

o The Junius manuscript, also known as the Cædmon manuscript, is an illustrated collection of
poems on biblical narratives
o The Exeter Book is an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there
in the 11th century (The Wanderer, The Seafarer)
o The Vercelli Book contains both poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be in
Vercelli (The Dream of the Rood)
o The Beowulf Manuscript, sometimes called the Nowell Codex, contains prose and poetry,
typically dealing with monstrous themes, including Beowulf

Alliterative
Virtually all Old English poetry is written in a single metre, a four-stress line with a syntactical break,
or caesura, between the second and third stresses, and with alliteration linking the two halves of the
line; this pattern is occasionally varied by six-stress lines. The poetry is formulaic, drawing on a
common set of stock phrases and phrase patterns, applying standard epithets to various classes of
characters, and depicting scenery with such recurring images as the eagle and the wolf, which wait
during battles to feast on carrion, and ice and snow, which appear in the landscape to signal sorrow.
In the best poems such formulas, far from being tedious, give a strong impression of the richness of
the cultural fund from which poets could draw. Other standard devices of this poetry are the
kenning, a figurative name for a thing, usually expressed in a compound noun (e.g., swan-road used
to name the sea); and variation, the repeating of a single idea in different words, with each repetition
adding a new level of meaning.
That these verse techniques changed little during 400 years of literary production suggests the
extreme conservatism of Anglo-Saxon culture

Two known poets from this period:

Caedmon
 considered the first Old English Christian poet
 he got his idea in a dream

Cynewulf (also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf)

 author of four Old English poems preserved in late 10th-century manuscripts
 Elene and The Fates of the Apostles are in the Vercelli Book, and The Ascension and Juliana
are in the Exeter Book

Old English prose works include legal writings, medical tracts, religious texts, and translations from
Latin and other languages. Particularly notable is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical record
begun about the time of King Alfred’s reign (871–899) and continuing for more than three centuries.