Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Literature

Old English literature, which is also referred to as Anglo-Saxon literature,

is commonly dated between 449/600 (invasion of Britain by Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes) and 1100/1200 (establishment of the Norman rule). It is hypothesized that
until the sixth-century BC the British islands were inhabited by Iberians and from
sixth-/seventh-century BC by Celts.
The year of 55 BC is that of the Roman invasion, and the years between
410 AD and 441 AD date the period of the Roman retreat. The year of 449 is the
traditional date of the coming of the Germanic peoples from the Continent.
Three Teutonic tribes, known as the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles,
invaded the former Roman colony of Britain in an uncoordinated assault,
successful only because of Celtic disunity. The invasion continued with irregular
arrivals for a century and a half, until around 600. The
Christianized during Roman rule Celtic inhabitants of Britain were driven
by the newcomers westwards to Wales and Cornwall and northwards into the
Highlands of Scotland, and gave modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh.
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought with them their paganism, traditions,
and language (Anglo-Saxon, also referred to as Old English, with four dialects:
Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, the last one being the dialect
of the best-known literature of that time), and embarked on the process of
becoming a new nation, giving modern English. The Jutes set up an independent
kingdom in Kent; the Saxons settled the area around the city of London and south
of the Thames as far as Cornwall, hence the modern Essex (East Saxons),
Middlessex (Middle Saxons), and Sussex (South Saxons); the rest of central and
northern part of England were inhabited by the Angles that gave the name of the
country (Angle and land - England). Angles, Saxons and Jutes were themselves
not unified, the sixth-, seventh- and eighth century marking an age of intertribal
conflict. It was in the ninth-century that Alfred, the only English ruler ever named
„the Great‟, unified during his reign (871-899) the Anglo-Saxon tribes and
successfully struggled against the invading Danes.
The earliest production of English literature is directly linked to the Anglo-
Saxon invasion of the British islands from the Continent and to the later process
of (re-)Christianization which started at the end of the sixth century, presumably
with the mission of St Augustine (?-604), the first Archbishop of Canterbury, that
arrived in Kent in 597. It is known that Pope
Gregory the Great instituted missionary efforts for the conversion to
Christianity of the Germanic tribes that had settled in Britain, after he had learned
of some pagan Anglo-Saxon prisoners offered for sale in the slave market of
Rome.
The Germanic invaders found in Britain a bleak and isolated land, where
fighting, hunting and fishing became their main means of survival.
Literature came to reflect the everyday events, mixing it with a vision of the
mysterious and the fantastic, the dangerous and the horrible, to which later
elements of the newly accepted Christian faith were added. Until Christianization,
the Anglo-Saxons had no genuine form of complete writing, and their early culture
on the Continent just modified some Latin letter symbols to use for inscriptions
cut into stone, metal, or wood. These symbols are termed „runes‟, originally
meaning „secret‟ or „mysterious‟. It was only after the Christianization of the
Anglo-Saxons that learning monks started compiling poems and prose works in
written form. Culture, literature and learning flourished in monasteries, and,
though much of the writing was in Latin, around the year of 700 many Christian
monks began writing in the vernacular language named „Old English‟, often
inserting in the Christian context of the texts many of their still strong pagan views.
The literature of the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain includes both verse and
prose productions, where in point of literacy poetry being by far superior to prose.
There are five distinct types of texts in Old English literature: lyric, epic,
chronicles, didactic prose, and charms and riddles.
The period is commonly considered to have an earliest part in which poetry
(Beowulf, The Seafarer, Deor’s Lament) focused on the pagan life of the
Germanic tribes, though already revealing some Christian elements.
This earliest part of Old English period gave also poetry of a more
emphatically Christian nature (Caedmon‟s Song), some biblical paráfrases such
as Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, along with some religious narratives (Christ, Elene,
Andreas), and the allegorical Phoenix, translated from Latin.
In the ninth-century, especially under Alfred the Great, much literature in
Latin, in particular prose, was translated into English (Pope Gregory‟s Pastoral
Care, Boethius‟ The Consolation of Philosophy, Bede‟s Ecclesiastical History),
and the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was
revised and expanded.
In the tenth- and eleventh-century, a number of works emerged, such as
the homilies, Biblical commentaries and hagiography of the abbot Aelfric of
Eynsham (c.955-1010), known as the „Grammarian‟, and the four Latin and
twenty-two English sermons of the Archbishop Wulfstan (c.960-1023), known as
the „Homilist‟, to be distinguished from other several Wulfstans who were active
in the tenth- and eleventh-century. The latter‟s most famous sermon is Sermo
Lupi ad Anglos, quando Dani maxime persecuti sunt eos („Sermon of the Wolf to
the English, when the Danes Persecuted Them Most‟), which expresses the
author‟s deep sense of English identity as well as the use of a pen-name, Lupus
(„wolf‟). Wulfstan is also the author of lawcodes
and a treatise on society, and is, with Aelfric, one of the two major
vernacular prose writers of the later Anglo-Saxon period, whose writings are
noted for their rich style, reflecting Latin models.
Other famous works of the period include the heroic poems Battle of
Maldon and Battle of Brunanbury, which represent late examples of Anglo-Saxon
verse. Most critics agree that Old English literary production dates from the
seventh- to late tenth-century, but most of the extant works are found in
manuscripts dating from around 900 to around 1050 (the exact dates of the
manuscripts are uncertain because of the nature of their oral transcriptions). It is
also hypothesised that literature first flourished in Northumbria, but, during the
reign of Alfred the Great, West Saxon became the cultural and literary centre of
the Old English literary world.

Extracted from The Beginnings of British Literature Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Medieval Literature
written by Petru Golban. Üç Mart Press, Kütahya – 2007