Old English Literature

VII – XI century

South-West University "Neofit Rilski” Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD

Historical Background
• I – V c. England (named Britannia) -a province of the Roman
Empire

• V c. Anglo-Saxon Conquest (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)

• 597 Pope Gregory sends Augustine to England to start the

conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity

• 871-899 Reign of King Alfred

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD
Earliest literature
• Earliest texts in written form date back to post-conversion times.
• Effect of the conversion on literacy and literature
̶ religious literature – produced in the monasteries by scribes;
consisting of interpretations/commentaries of the holy texts
(homilies), lives of saints and martyrs.
̶ secular literature – produced and passed by word of mouth;
committed to writing often much later than the time of its
composition; comprising wholly of works in verse (poetry)

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD

Manuscript production
• All the Old English literature is
contained in manuscripts.
• The manuscripts at the time
were made using animal (calf or
sheep) skin, called parchment or
vellum.
• The manuscripts were often
illuminated both by coloured and
calligraphic lettering, and by
visual images.

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD

Secular literature
• Continued the old Germanic tradition of oral poetry developed
from the times before the Anglo-Saxons settled in England.
• Its subject matter was the feats of bravery of heroic warriors.
• Values fundamental to the society that created this literature:
̶ ties of kinship were essential for founding a sense of
belonging to a community
̶ loyalty to the king/lord by the retainers (many of them were
the king’s blood kindred); blood vengeance is a sacred duty.
̶ generosity of the king towards his subjects
South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD
Pagan Fate (Wyrd) and Christian Providence
• The world of Old English literature accommodates both the
pagan concept of blind fate and that of Christian providence.
• Fate is blind and strikes suddenly and violently and its choice
could not be explained in terms of the crime-punishment logic.
• Christian Providence is the divine guidance and care by God. In
contrast to Fate, God’s punishment is always motivated by the
trespass of his law.
• The explanation for this coexistence of mutually exclusive
concepts is found in the fact of the slow, unforced progress of
religious conversion.
South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD
The Old English Epic – Thematic Features
• Epic – only one work has survived in a X century manuscript form
– Beowulf. Epic works are usually long narrative poems that
relate the lives of heroic figures.
• The earliest epic works are those composed by the ancient Greek
poet Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey.
• Typical of the epic narrative is that it begins ‘in the middle of
things’ (in medias res) and supplies the missing earlier details in
retrospective narration.
• Begins with an invocation of a muse’s help.
• Often includes embedded stories about other heroes.
South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD
The Old English Epic – Formal Features
(prosody)
• The verse, not only of epics but of all Old English poetry, uses
alliteration instead of rhyme as a structuring device.
• Alliteration – the repetition of clusters of consonant sounds.
• Alliteration is usually found in stressed syllables.
• The verse line is divided by a strong pause – the caesura.
• On each side of the caesura there are two or one stressed
syllables.
• There is no pause at the end of most verse lines – the run-on-
line.

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD

The Poetic Diction
• Special vocabulary that contains a multiplicity of terms for lord, warrior,
spear, shield.

• Metonymy is used as in iron for sword

• Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a thing or a concept is referred to
by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.

• Kennings – compounds of two words instead of one used with the purpose
of adding variety to a language in which some words had to be repeated
very frequently. Examples: sea – whale-road, body – life-house, king – the
giver of rings, warrior – tree of battle, fighting – battle-play.
South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD
From Beowulf
• NOT in any wise would the earls’-defence
• suffer that slaughterous // stranger to live, // - caesura
• useless deeming his days and years
• to men on earth. Now many an earl
• of Beowulf brandished blade ancestral,
• fain the life of their lord to shield,
• their praised prince, if power were theirs;
• never they knew,—as they neared the foe,
• hardy-hearted heroes of war,
• aiming their swords on every side
• the accursed to kill,—no keenest blade,
• no farest of falchions fashioned on earth,
• could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD

Old English Elegies
• Poems defined by an overall sad mood which is provoked by a
misfortune that has befallen the speaker in the poem (lyric
persona).
• Unlike the epics and other shorter heroic narrative poems, the
elegies were short lyric poems. The sense of catastrophe and
despair is almost of cosmic dimensions as the speaker
expresses his sense of complete loneliness in the world.
• Some of these elegies are The Wanderer, The Sea-Farer,
Deor’s Lament.

South-West University "Neofit Rilski" Assist. Prof. Elena Kalapsazova, PhD