THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Centuries of Invasion

The Dark Ages, as the Anglo-Saxon period is often called, was a time of bloody
conflicts, ignorance, violence, and barbarism. Life was difficult, and the literature of
the period reflects that reality. Little imagery of the brief English summers appears in
this literature; winter prevails, and spring comes slowly, if at all. The people were
serious minded, and the reader finds scarce humor in their literature. Indeed, many
of the stories and poems present heroic struggles in which only the strong survive.

Early Britain

The first person ever to write about England may have been the Roman general Julius
Caesar, who in 55 b.c. attempted to conquer the British Isles. Put off by fierce Celtic
warriors, Caesar hastily claimed victory for Rome and returned to Europe, leaving the
Britons (as the people were known) and their neighbors to the north and west, the
Picts and Gaels, in peace. A century later, however, the Roman army returned in force
and made good Caesar's claim. Britain became a province of the great Roman
Empire, and the Romans introduced cities, roads, written scholarship, and eventually
Christianity to the island. Their rule lasted more than three hundred years.
"Romanized" Britons adapted to an urban lifestyle, living in villas and frequenting
public baths, and came to depend on the Roman military for protection. Then, early
in the fifth century, the Romans pulled out of Britain, called home to help defend
their beleaguered empire against hordes of invaders. With no central government or
army, it was not long before Britain, too, became a target for invasion.

Anglo-Saxons

The Angles and Saxons, along with other Germanic tribes, began arriving from
northern Europe around a.d. 449. The Britons – perhaps led by a Celtic chieftain
named Arthur (likely the genesis of the legendary King Arthur of myth and folklore) –
fought a series of battles against the invaders. Eventually, however, the Britons were
driven to the west (Cornwall and Wales), the north (Scotland), and across the English
Channel to an area of France that became known as Brittany. Settled by the Anglo-
Saxons, the main part of Britain took on a new name: Angle-land, or England. Anglo-
Saxon culture became the basis for English culture, and their guttural, vigorous
language became the spoken language of the people, the language now known as
Old English.

Vikings

The 790s brought the next wave of invaders, a fearsome group of seafaring
marauders from the rocky, windswept coasts of Denmark and Norway: the Vikings.
Shrieking wildly and waving giant battle-axes, Viking raiders looted, killed, and
burned down entire villages. At first, they hit and ran; later, finding England a more
pleasant spot to spend the winter than their icy homeland, the Danish invaders set
up camps and gradually gained control of much of the north and east of the country.
In the south, the Danes finally met defeat at the hands of a powerful Anglo-Saxon
king known as Alfred the Great. Alfred unified the English, and under his rule,
learning and culture flourished. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of English
history, was initiated at his bidding.

The Norman Conquest

In 1042, a descendant of Alfred's took the throne, the deeply religious Edward the
Confessor. Edward, who had no children, had once sworn an oath making his French
cousin William, duke of Normandy, his Heir – or so William claimed. When Edward
died, however, a council of nobles and church officials chose an English earl named
Harold to succeed him. Incensed, William led his Norman army in what was to be the
last successful invasion of the island of Britain: the Norman Conquest. Harold was
killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and on Christmas Day of that year, William
the Conqueror was crowned king of England. The Norman Conquest ended Anglo-
Saxon dominance in England. Losing their land to the conquerors, noble families sank
into the peasantry, and a new class of privileged Normans took their place.

The Spread of Christianity

Like all cultures, that of the Anglo-Saxons changed over time. The early invaders were
seafaring wanderers whose lives were bleak, violent, and short. Their pagan religion
was marked by a strong belief in wyrd, or fate, and they saved their admiration for
heroic warriors whose fate it was to prevail in battle. As the Anglo-Saxons settled into
their new land, however, they became an agricultural people – less violent, more
secure, more civilized. The bleak fatalism of the Anglo-Saxons' early beliefs may have
reflected the reality of their lives, but it offered little hope. Life was harsh, it taught,
and the only certainty was that it would end in death. Christianity opened up a bright
new possibility: that the suffering of this world was merely a prelude to the eternal
happiness of heaven.

No one knows exactly when the first Christian missionaries arrived in Britain, but by
a.d. 300 the number of Christians on the island was significant. Over the next two
centuries, Christianity spread to Ireland and Scotland, and from Scotland to the Picts
and Angles in the north. In 597, a Roman missionary named Augustine arrived in the
kingdom of Kent, where he established a monastery at Canterbury. From there,
Christianity spread so rapidly that by 690 all of Britain was at least nominally
Christian, though many held on to some pagan traditions and beliefs. Monasteries
became centers of intellectual, literary, artistic, and social activity. At a time when
schools and libraries were completely unknown, monasteries offered the only
opportunity for education. Monastic scholars imported books from the Continent,
which were then painstakingly copied. In addition, original works

were written, mostly in scholarly Latin, but later in Old English. The earliest recorded
history of the English people came from the clergy at the monasteries. The greatest
of these monks was the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735), author of A History of the
English Church and People. When Vikings invaded in the late eighth and ninth
centuries, they plundered monasteries and threatened to obliterate all traces of
cultural refinement. Yet Christianity continued as a dominant cultural force for more
than a thousand years to come.

Old English Christian Poetry

Religious poetry seems to have flourished in northern England-Northumbria-

throughout the eighth century, though most of it has survived only in West Saxon
transcriptions of the late tenth century. Monks produced not only manuscripts,
masonry, sculpture and missionaries but also a lot of Christian poetry. Much of it
consists of retellings of books and episodes from the Old Testament. Much of this
religious poetry is anonymous, but the names of two poets are known: CAEDMON       
(d. c. 670), the first English poet known by name, and CYNEWULF (late eighth or early
ninth century). They wrote on biblical and religious themes. According to Bede
Caedmon became the founder of a school of Christian poetry and the he was the first
to use the traditional metre diction for Christian religious poetry. This period of Old
English poetry is called "Caedmonian". All the old religious poems that were not
assigned to Caedmon were invariably given to Cynewulf, the poet of the second
phase of Old English Christian poetry. With Cynewulf, Anglo-Saxon religious poetry
moves beyond biblical paraphrase into the didactic, the devotional, and the mystical.
The four Anglo-Saxon Christian poems which have the name of Cynewulf are Christ,
Juliana, Elene, and The Fates of the Apostles. All these poems possess both a high
degree of literary craftsmanship and a note of mystical contemplation which
sometimes rises to a high level of religious passion. One of the most remarkable
poems written under the influence of the school of Cynewulf is The Dream of the
Rood,by some it is attributed to the same Cynewulf, Andreas, and The Phoenix.
Another significant Anglo-Saxon religious poem is the fragmentary Judith. The final
part of Guthlac, a poem of 1370 lies, is probably Cynewulf's.

Latin Writings: Bede and Alcuin.

The most important Anglo-Saxon Latinist Clerks were the Venerable Bede (673-735)
and Alcuin (735-804); both came out of Northumbria. To them and to those like them
English Literature owes the preservation of the traces of primitive poetry.

The Venerable Bede was born in 673 and brought up in Wearmouth Abbey. A few
years later he moved to the monastery of Jarrow where he spent his whole adult life.
He was the most learned theologian and the best historian of Christianity of his time.
He was a teacher and a scholar of Latin and Greek, and he had many pupils among
the monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow. He wrote the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis
Anglorum"(Ecclesiastical History of the English People) and finished in 731. By that
year he had written nearly 40 works, mostly biblical commentaries. Bede died in 735.

Bede's History is the first account of Anglo-Saxon England ever written. He worked on
this book for several years before completing it in 731. Over the next fifty years it was
copied in Northumbria and elsewhere, and it became widely diffused in Western
Europe throughout the Middle Ages. It was first printed in 1480. The History is
readable and attractive. He writes of the geography of Britain, the coming of
Augustine, the Northumbrian council concerned with the acceptance of Christianity
or the achievements of Abbess Hilda and the poet Caedmon.

Alcuin was Charlemagne's collaborator from 790 onwards. He was brought up in York
Alcuin left his country when the earliest civilization of the Angles was about to be
destroyed, because the Danish invasions, which ruined monasteries and centres of
learning, were beginning. He wrote liturgical, grammatical, hagiographical, and
philosophical works, as well as numerous letters and poems in Latin, including an
elegy on the Destruction of Lindsfarne by the Danes.

Old English Prose: Alfred.

The glory of Alfred's reign is Alfred himself (849-901) writes George Simpson. It was
under his influence that the earlier poetic works, which had almost all been written
in the Northumbrian dialect, were transcribed into the language of the West saxons.
King Alfred played an important role in this literary movement. He surrounded
himself with scholars and learned men, learnt Latin after he was grown up, and
began to translate the works which seemed to him most apt to civilize his people. In
this way he became the father of English prose-writers. He himself is credited with a
translation of the Universal History of Orosius. He translated (or ordered to translate)
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Angles. Much more important, and among the
best of Alfred's works, is the version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae. The
first great book in English prose is The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, inspired though not
written by Alfred. In some monasteries casual notes of important events had been
made; but under Alfred's encouragement there is a systematic revision of the earlier
records and a larger survey of West Saxon history. The great Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is
a series of annals which start with an outline of English history from Julius Caesar's
invasion to the middle of the fifth century and continues to 1154.

Another important prose work and source of information about King Alfred's life is a
short biographical work, the the Life of King Alfred,written in Latin and attributed to
Asser (d. 910), Bishop of Sherborne (892-910), whom Alfred called from Wales to aid
him in the re-establishing of learning. Asser also wrote a Chronicle of English History
for the years 849 to 887.

Caedmon and Cynewulf

Caedmon, (flourished 670), entered the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby)

between 658 and 680, when he was an elderly man. According to Bede he was an
unlearned herdsman who received suddenly, in a vision, the power of song, and later
put into English verses passages translated to him from the Scriptures. Bede tells us
that Caedmon turned into English the story of Genesis and Exodus. The name
Caedmon has been conjectured to be Celtic. The poems assumed to be Caedmon
poems Caedmon are: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. But critical
research has proved the ascription to be impossible. Perhaps the Caedmon songs
were used by later singers and left their spirit in the poems that remains; but of the
originals described by Bede we have no trace. The only work which can be attributed
to him is the short "Hymn of Creation," quoted by Bede himself. This is all we possess
of the first known English poet. It survives in several manuscripts of Bede in various
dialects.

Cynewulf (late 8th or 9th century) was identified, not certainly, but probably, with a
Cynewulf who was Bishop of Lindisfarne and lived in the middle of the eighth
century. He was a wandering singer or poet who lived a gay and secular life. The
accuracy of some of his battle scenes and seascapes showed that he had fought on
land and sailed the seas. Finally, after a dream in which he had a vision of the Holy
Rood, he changed his life, became a religious poet, sang of Christ, the apostles, and
the saints. His work represents an advance in culture upon the more primitive
Caedmonian poems. The poems attributed to him are: Juliana, Elene, The Fates of
the Apostles, and Christ II.

CAEDMON'S HYMN

The following nine lines are all of what survives that can reasonably be attributed to
him. Bede quotes them in Chapter 24 of his History. Bede adds that these lines are
only the general sense, not the actual words that Caedmon sang in his dream.
Caedmon's gift remained an oral one and was devoted to sacred subjects.

"Now must we praise"

Now must we praise of heaven's kingdom the Keeper

Of the Lord the power and his Wisdom

The work of the Glory-Father, as he of marvels each,

The eternal Lord, the beginning established.

He first created of earth for the sons 5

Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator.

Then the middle-enclosure of mankind the Protector

The eternal Lord, thereafter made

For men, earth the Lord almighty.

(658-680)

LITERATURE OF THE TIMES

The Epic Tradition

The early literature of the Anglo-Saxon period mostly took the form of lengthy epic
poems praising the deeds of heroic warriors. These poems reflected the reality of life
at this time, which was often brutal. However, the context in which these poems
were delivered was certainly not grim. In the great mead halls of kings and nobles,
Anglo-Saxons would gather on special occasions to celebrate in style. They feasted on
pies and roasted meats heaped high on platters, warmed themselves before a
roaring fire, and listened to scops – professional poets – bring the epic poems to life.
Strumming a harp, the scop would chant in a clear voice that carried over the shouts
and laughter of the crowd, captivating them for hours on end with tales of courage,
high drama, and tragedy. To the Anglo-Saxons, these epic poems were far more than
simple entertainment. The scop's performance was a history lesson, moral sermon,
and pep talk rolled into one, instilling cultural pride and teaching how a

true hero should behave. At the same time, in true Anglo-Saxon fashion, the scop
reminded his listeners that they were helpless in the hands of fate and that all
human ambition would end in death. With no hope for an afterlife, only an epic
poem could provide a measure of immortality.

BEOWULF: A HEROIC AND EPIC POEM

Like most heroic poems of Western culture, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid, the
Song of Roland, the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf is about a past era. The Old English
Beowulf has several claims on the attention of modern readers: it is a poem of
barbaric splendour and artistry; an eloquent celebration of a heroic life and death; an
"action" of epic sweep and scope. It is still capable of stirring the hearts of readers,
and because of its excellence as well as its antiquity, the poem deserves the high
position that it is generally assigned in the study of English poetry. Like the "winged
words" of Homer, Beowulf was composed to be projected in public performance - to
be sung or spoken aloud. It is written after the unmistakable style of oral poetry, a
highly-developed medium evolved in and for oral composition and performance. The
first songs of Beowulf were probably sung in the halls of kings and noblemen at great
feasts. Beowulf himself tells his own Geatish King Hygelac of such feasts in King
Hrothgar's hall:

There were songs, and the telling of tales. One ancient

Dane told of long-dead times,

And sometimes Hrothgar himself, with the harp

In his lap, (1) stroked (2) its silvery strings

And told wonderful stories, a brave (3) king

Reciting unhappy truths about good

And evil--and sometimes he wove (4) his stories

On the mournful thread of old age, remembering

Buried strength and the battles it had won.

He would weep, the old king, wise with many

Winters, remembering what he'd done, once,

What he'd seen, what he knew. And so we sat

The day away, feasting. ...

(Beowulf, Lines 2104-2117, Translated by Burton Raffel.)

Notes:

1. stroked: struck.

2. wove: depicted.

Commentary: Hrothgar is presented as holding a harp whose function was to

accompany the performance of poetry with a melody. Beowulf is the first large poem
in English to survive this transplanting from an oral to a literary mode: it is the
beginning of English literature. Beowulf is the only long heroic poem to survive
complete in Old English.

Beowulf is a heroic poem in the simple sense that it celebrates the actions of its
protagonist. Beowulf, son of Edgetheow, is the very type of a hero in that it is his
eagerness to seek out and meet every challenge alone and unarmed that makes him
glorious in life and brings him to his tragic death. He also has a hero's delight in his
own prowess and a hero's magnanimity to lesser men.

Beowulf is a typical heroic poem not only in its central figure but also in its world and
its values. The warriors like the joys of the hall, where they celebrate their victories
with food and drink, and fighting; they are devoted to merriment and pleasure in hall
or glory in the battlefield. Their possessions are gold cups or gold armour, the
outward and visible signs of that happiness and glory.

Beowulf is not merely a poem about a hero but an epic. In the poem there are "the
qualities of epic - inclusiveness of scope, objectivity of treatment, unity of ethos and
an "action" of significance," which shows that that Beowulf is not merely a poem
about a hero but an epic. There is a unity of consciousness, an ethos which arises
from a primitive intuition of the cosmic solidarity, organic unity and continuity of life.
Such a unity of consciousness, found in an oral, public poem, must come from the
organic nature of the society that produced it.

Beowulf: A Literary Work

Beowulf survives in only one version, in a manuscript now in the British Museum. It is
not known when the poem was composed, or by whom. The dating of this copy of
Beowulf 's manuscript is still a matter of controversy: some scholars put it as early as
700 others think it was probably made by scribes of about the year 1000, and the
language is the "classical" late West-Saxon of the Wessex of Ethelred and Aelfric. We
know that Beowulf was admired in the ninth century by King Alfred. The poem, first
called Beowulf in 1805, was first printed in 1815. Burton Raffel's translation of
Beowulf contains a prologue and 43 numbered sections; other translations do not
divide the text into numbered sections. It is composed of 3,182 lines, which make it
the longest Old English poem. Beowulf's literary composition is traditionally placed in
the Northumbria of the age of Bede, who died in 735, though recently the less well
documented Mercia of King Offa, who reigned from 757 to 796, has found its
supporters.

The Plot of the Poem and its Structure

The central hero of the poem is Beowulf, and its main stories are Beowulf's fights
against two monsters, a male and a female, Grendel and Grendel's mother, and a
dragon. The poet also introduces o lot of incidental stories and digressions. On the
whole the poem tells two stories, the youth and old age of Beowulf, unified by the
presence of Beowulf who is the hero of both. According to the major events in the
life of Beowulf, the hero of the Geats, the poem can be divided into two parts.

First Part

In the first part Beowulf is in his youth and achieves glory in a foreign land by fighting
and killing first Grendel, a monster who has been attacking Heorot, the hall of the
Danish King Hrothgar, and then Grendel's mother, who comes the next night to
avenge her son, in an underwater cave. The fight in the subterranean cave is fierce,
both sides evenly matched in strength, until Beowulf sees a giant sword on the cave
wall which he uses to kill the monster and cut off Grendel's head, after which the
sword-blade melts. Beowulf returns triumphant with the sword-hilt and Grendel's
head.

Second Part

In the second part, Beowulf is in his old age, having ruled his country well for fifty
years, after the deaths of Hygelac and his son Heardred. Tragedy strikes again and
Beowulf goes to fo fight a dragon who is destroying his people and his realm. The
dragon has guarded an ancient warrior's treasure until a fugitive slave robbed the
hoard in order to gain the favour of his lord. Beowulf decided to fight the dragon
alone and has a fireproof iron shield made. At the end of the fight Beowulf, after
being mortally wounded and helped by his kinsman Wiglaf, kills the dragon. The
poem ends with Beowulf's funeral and a prophecy of disaster for his people, the
Geats.

The fight against the dragons is not like the tribal feuds the warriors were involved in
because, according to their social code, they had the special duty of vengeance;
Grendel and Grendel's mother are not part of that social order: they represent fatal
evil and Beowulf's unknown destiny. Fighting against Grendel Beowulf chooses the
heroic way of life and tests Fate. Beowulf puts himself in a position from which he
cannot withdraw. Doom ultimately claims him, but not until he has fulfilled to its
limits the pagan ideal of a heroic life.

Reflections of Common Life

While epics such as Beowulf gave Anglo-Saxons a taste of glory, scops also sang
shorter, lyric poems, such as "The Seafarer," that reflected a more everyday reality:
the wretchedness of a cold, wet sailor clinging to his storm-tossed boat; the misery
and resentment of his wife, left alone for months or years, not knowing if her
husband would ever return. Some of these poems mourn loss and death in the mood
of grim fatalism typical of early Anglo-Saxon times; others, written after the advent of
Christianity, express religious faith or offer moral instruction. A manuscript known as
the Exeter Book contains many of the surviving Anglo-Saxon lyrics, including more
than 90 riddles, such as this one: Wonder was on the wave, when water became
bone. Answer: an iceberg.

N.B. The Growth of English The most valuable characteristic of Old English, however,
was its ability to change and grow, to adopt new words as the need arose. While
Christianity brought Latin words such as cloister, priest, and candle into the Anglo-
Saxon vocabulary, encounters with the Vikings brought skull, die, crawl, and rotten.
The arrival of the Normans in 1066 would stretch the language even farther, with
thousands of words from the French.