Anglo Saxon Period

The First Settlers and Invaders

• Celts -> first settlers
• Franks -> invaders from Germany and Italy
(6th &7th BC)
• Romans -> under Claudius (43 - 410 AD)
• Angles
• Saxon
• Jutes
Under the Angles, Saxon and Jutes
• Angle-land -> England
• Name of the days
 Under the Romans
• Missionaries under St. Agustinus
• King Aethelberht I of Kent embraced
christianity
• The first cathedral
• The introduction of the Roman alphabet
• The replacement of rune
• Oral strories were replaced by written works
i.e. Beowulf
 Centers of Christianity and Secular
Learning
• Canterbury in the south, York and Yarrow in
the north
• Arch Bishop of Canterbury
• Allevin of York
• Theodore of Yarrow
 New Invaders 8th century
• The Normans/Scandinavian from Norway,
Sweden and Denmark
• “The Danes”
• Churches, monasteries, libraries and schools
were destroyed
• Invaded almost all England, except the South
 Alfred the Great
• King of the Wessex
• Battle of Etahnadune
• The defeat of Gutrin
• The Lock Dane Law
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
 Literature
• On war, religion, personal sadness and
happiness
• Most are anonymous
• Written mostly by monks
• The themes are security, both for individual
and society, and in religious faith
 Poetry
• Two features used: caseura and alliteration
• Caedmon -> Caedmon’s Hymm, Paraphrase
• Deor - > Deor’s Lament
• Cynewulf -> The Christ, Juliana, The Life of the
Saint, the Dream of the Rood
 Long Poems
• Several of long poems are preserved in the
Exeter Book such as The Wanderer, The
Seafarer (anonymous, elegiac poems)
• Beowulf -> Anglo-saxon stories, heroic, 6th
century, story of a hero from Sweden
• The Battle of Maldon -> more factual, heroic
 PROSE
• Most of the books were histories, non
imaginative
• Bede, known as Venerable Bede -> a monk, a
theologian, a historian and a chronologist
• King Alfred whose reign was a time of great
literary production, known as the founder of
English prose.
• Aelfric -> a monk, a translator, a writer ->
Catholic Holmilies and Lives of the Saints