ANGLO

derived from the word “Anglia”,

the Latin name for England, and still the

modern name of its eastern region
 Anglo-Saxon period
▧used to be known as the DARK AGES,
mainly because written sources for the
early years of Saxon invasion are
scarce. However, most historians now
prefer the terms early middle ages or
early medieval period
 Anglo-Saxon literature
▧Old English literature
▧encompasses literature written in
Anglo-Saxon (Old English) during
the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of
Britain, from the mid-5th century to
the Norman Conquest of 1066.
 Anglo-Saxon literature
▧Literature began with the Celtic
Druids.
▧The works include genres such as
epic poetry, hagiography, sermons,
Bible translations, legal works,
chronicles, riddles, and others.
▧The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a
collection of early English history.
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
(449-1066)
1. People Living on the British Isles
• Picts – Pre-Celtic
• Britons – Celtic
• Gaels – Celtic
2. Roman armies conquered the Britons
• Romans introduced cities, stone roads,
written scholarship, and Christianity.
• Romans abandoned Britain
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
(449-1066)
3. Britian invaded by Germanic peoples
• Arthurian Legends arose trying to combat the
invasion
• Germanic tribes organized themselves into a
confederation, the Heptarchy

4. Anglo-Saxon culture changed over time

• Seafarers practiced pagan religions
• Became farmers who practiced Christianity
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
(449-1066)
5. Growth of Christianity
• Patrick converted Ireland, and they (the
converted) colonized Scotland
• Augustine established a monastery at
Canterbury
• Christianity spread to all of Britain by
690
 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
(449-1066)
6. The Danish Invasions
• Danes or Vikings attacked England, but
Alfred the Great defeated them and forced
them to accept Christianity.
• The Battle of Hastings took place in 1066
o Two people claimed to be king of England
o William the Conqueror won, beginning the
Medieval Period
 Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Literature
• Anglo-Saxon poetry used several devices, including:
× Metaphors: a comparison without “like” or “as”
× Similes: a comparison using “like” or “as”
× Alliteration: repetition of the initial consonant
sound in a line of poetry
× Caesura: a pause in a line of poetry
× Kenning: a descriptive phrase or compound word
that substitutes a noun
 The Epic
○ An epic is a long, narrative poem that
celebrates a hero’s deeds.
○ Epics were told in the tradition of oral
storytelling (many people could not read or
write)
○ Characteristics of oral storytelling
■ Stock epithets: adjectives that point out
special traits of particular people or things
■ Kennings: a descriptive phrase or
compound word that substitutes for one
word
For example, Grendel = “sin-stained
demon” in Beowulf
 FACTS
AND
TRIVIAS
 “
During the Anglo-Saxon
Period, England was invaded
by the Vikings, the Jutes, and
the Saxons.
 “
Much of the Anglo-Saxon
poetry that has survived is
Pagan, with Christian
additions.
 “
The two most important
traditions of Anglo-Saxon
poetry are heroic and elegiac.
 “
The first Archbishop of
Canterbury was Saint
Augustine.
 “
Another term for Anglo-
Saxon language is Old
English.
 “
The Romans introduced
Christianity to Britain.
 “
Anglo-Saxon literature
survived in the form of
spoken verse.
 “
Beowulf is the oldest known
English epic poem.
 “
The estimated year of the
arrival of the Anglo-Saxon
is 450.
 “
Tetrameter is the four
accented syllables per
line in literature.
 “
Vikings, the common
name for Danish
pirates.
 “
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
is the record of the
significant events back then.
 “
The people we call Anglo-Saxons were
actually immigrants from northern Germany
and southern Scandinavia. Bede, a monk
from Northumbria writing some centuries
later, says that they were from some of the
most powerful and warlike tribes in
Germany.
 “
Bede names three of these tribes: the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes. There were probably
many other peoples who set out for Britain in
the early fifth century, however. Batavians,
Franks and Frisians are known to have made
the sea crossing to the stricken province of
‘Britannia’.
LITERAR
Y WORKS
 Beowulf
▧an Old English epic story consisting of
3,182 alliterative lines.
▧It may be the oldest surviving long story
in Old English
▧commonly cited as one of the most
important works of Old English
literature.
Beowulf
 Widsith
▧the supreme example of the oral courtly
minstrelsy tradition commonly found in
the Anglo-Saxon literature;
▧the poem is the semi-autobiographical
manuscript of such a minstrel known as a
scop.
Widsith
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round
Table
▧ After Uther Pendragon's death, Merlin the
magician forms a stone and in it a sword. After
many years, the young Arthur, secretly the son of
Uther Pendragon, pulls the sword out of the
stone and becomes King. Together with Merlin,
he constructs a round table, at which only the
best knights of England may sit. More and more
knights come to join the brotherhood of the
Round Table, and each has his own adventures.
 The Dream of Rood
▧The poem speaks of a dreamer who
had a dream of a bright Cross
embellished with gems and how a
‘young Hero’ sacrifices Himself for
the redemption of mankind.
The Dream of Rood
 The Phoenix
▧ It illustrates the presence of an earthly paradise
in east, which is, probably, Syria as it voyages
towards it after its thousand years of nest
building, death and rebirth.
▧ The respective part converses about the mystical
and mystifying beauty, life and death of Phoenix.
The Phoenix
 The Wife’s Lament
▧The poem is primarily concerned
with the evocation of the grief of the
female speaker and with the
representation of her state of
despair.
The Wife’s Lament
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
▧The prose work is written by Bede, an
important and influential ecclesiastical
scholar and historian; his work discusses
the unexpected and miraculous revelation
of the gift of song to Caedmon, a lowly lay
brother at the monastery of Hilda at
Whitby.
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
 Sermon to the English
▧the famous sermon delivered by
Wulfstan, Archbishop of York from
1002 to 1023;
▧the oration represents a vivid
picture of the horrors and outcomes
of the Danish invasion.
Sermon to the English
 The Riddles and Gnomic Verses
▧also show the opinions and life of a
common man and peasantry instead
of an elite class, which is commonly
found in the literature of the era
The Riddles and Gnomic Verses
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
▧commenced with King Alfred’s
period and consists of the historical
records of the invasion of Julius
Caesar to the middle of the fifth
century and continues further.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
 Genesis
▧first of the three poems based
on the Old Testament and the
longest one with about three
thousand lines.
Genesis
 Christ and Satan
▧The poem has been dedicated to
magnify the disparity of Heaven
and Hell, good and evil and the
consequences of following Christ
and Satan.
Christ and Satan
 De Consolatione Philosophiae

▧ is written by a Roman philosopher Boethius

and is later translated by King Alfred.
▧ The work is devised in dialogue form, the
conversation between the author and
personified Philosophy and confers about the
matters of God, His government of the world,
the truth of happiness, vice and virtue and
the matters of God’s knowledge of man’s
freewill.
De Consolatione Philosophiae
 The Seafarer
▧This 124-line poem is often
considered an elegy, since it appears
to be spoken by an old sailor looking
back on his life and preparing for
death.
The Seafarer
 The Battle of Maldon
▧This poem is unusual in that it
commemorates not a glorious
victory but a crushing defeat: in
991 the Anglo-Saxon army failed
to ward off the Vikings near the
town of Maldon in Essex.
The Battle of Maldon
 Caedmon’s Hymn
▧ a short Old English poem originally composed
by Cædmon, an illiterate cow-herder who was
able to sing in honour of God the Creator, using
words that he had never heard before.
▧ It was composed between 658 and 680 and is the
oldest recorded Old English poem, being
composed within living memory of the
Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England. It is
also one of the oldest surviving samples of
Germanic alliterative verse.
Caedmon’s Hymn
AUTHORS
 Caedmon (610-680)
▧ first known religious poet of England
▧ the father of English songs
▧ His life story is vividly described in Bede’s
Historia Ecclesiastica
▧ Caedmon, who was a humble and unlearned
man, looked after cattle for an abbey on the
Yorkshire coast
▧ his first poem was named The Hymn of Praise.
Later on, encouraged by the success of his first
poem, Caedmon composed many other poems by
using the biblical material.
 Cynewulf
▧ Cynewulf lived in the early 9th century.
▧ Except the unknown composer of Beowulf, he
is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon poet.
▧ He produced four poems: Christ, Juliana,
The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene.
▧ Of all these poems the most characteristic is
Christ, which is a didactic poem in three
parts: the first part celebrates the Nativity;
the second part describes the Ascension; and
the third part deals with the Doomsday.
 Cynewulf
▧Cynewulf took his subject matter
partly from the church liturgy, but
more largely from the homilies of
Gregory the Great. The poem
expresses a deep love for Christ and
reverence for Virgin Mary.
 Venerable Bede When (673-735)

▧first scholar in English literature

▧has been regarded as the father of
English learning.
▧His works, over 40 in number, were
written exclusively in Latin and
covered the whole field of human
knowledge of his day.
 Venerable Bede When (673-735)
▧The most important of his works is The
Ecclesiastical History of the English
People.
▧The book not only tells us how religion
was introduced and spread in England
but also recounts some historical events of
that period as well as some Anglo-Saxon
mythological legends.
▧It is in this book that Bede describes
Caedman’s legendary life story.
 Alfred the Great (848-901)

▧King of Wessex kingdom

▧During his reign, he tried every
means to improve education by
founding colleges and importing
teachers from Europe.
▧He was a well-known translator.
 Alfred the Great (848-901)

▧He translated some important Latin

works into English, among which,
the most important is The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle.
▧This book records the main
happenings of the Anglo-Saxon
period. It is the best monument of
the Old English prose.
 Ælfric (955-1020)
▧A monk of the late Old English
period who wrote prolifically, often
on linguistic matters.
▧Apart from his Catholic Homilies
and Lives of the Saints we have a
Latin grammar with glossary which
was compiled in English.
 Ælfric (955-1020)
▧His Colloquium was intended to
improve knowledge of Latin among
his pupils.
▧Ælfric worked as a monk in the
Benedictine monastery of
Winchester and later at Eynsham
(near Oxford) where he became
abbot around 1006.
 Group Leader: Smyll Poblete
Members:
Lixette Avena
Justine Caronan
Fresious Castro
Nicole Castro
Hanna Cosilet
Janine Espiritu
Victor Pacamalan
Danielle Pasion
Cristhea Soriano

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