Characteristics of the Old English Literature

At the beginning of the fifth century, literature and history were preserved in this
preliterate culture by Bards or oral poets. Beowulf is probably the work of a poet making
use of the older “oral poetry”.

Beowulf comes from the old English or Anglo-Saxon literary and historical period of
what was the ancient Britannia. This period of Old English extends from about a 450 to
1066, the year of the Norman-French conquest of England. The Germanic Tribes from
Europe brought with them the Old English, or, rather, the Angle-Saxon which and Jute
interrelated tongues which in turns is also the basic of modern English.

In descending order of quantity, Old English literature consists of: sermons and saints'
lives; biblical translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-
Saxon chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical
works on grammar, medicine, geography; and poetry. In all there are over 400 surviving
manuscripts from the period, of which about 189 are considered "major".

Scholarship

Old English literature has gone through different periods of research; in the 19th and
early 20th centuries the focus was on the Germanic and pagan roots that scholars thought
they could detect in Old English literature. Later, on account of the work of Bernard F.
Huppé, the influence of Augustinian exegesis was emphasized. Today, along with a focus
upon paleography and the physical manuscripts themselves more generally, scholars
debate such issues as dating, place of origin, authorship, and the connections between
Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages, and literary merits.

Extant manuscripts

A large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written
during its last 300 years (9th to 11th centuries), in both Latin and the vernacular. There
were considerable losses of manuscripts as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries
in the 16th century. Scholarly study of the language began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I when Matthew Parker and others obtained whatever manuscripts they could. Old
English manuscripts have been highly prized by collectors since the 16th century, both
for their historic value and for their aesthetic beauty with their uniformly spaced letters
and decorative elements.
 There are four major poetic manuscripts:

 The Junius manuscript, also known as the man hunt, is an illustrated

collection of poems on biblical narratives.

 The Exeter Book, is an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it

was donated there in the 11th century.

 The Vercelli Book, contains both poetry and prose; it is not known how it
came to be in Vercelli.

 The Beowulf Manuscript (British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv),

sometimes called the Nowell Codex, contains prose and poetry, typically dealing
with monstrous themes, including Beowulf.

Poetry

Old English poetry included long epic heroic poems, which drew on the Bible as well
as on pagan sources for their content. Some poetry was also based on historical events.
With a history of invasions and occupations, many writings of this era are chronicles,
annals, and historical records. Some are in the forms of poetry and describe various
battles, for example, "The Battle of Maldon" and "The Battle of Brunanburh". The themes
are war, conquest and bravery. Many eighth-century works depict Anglo-Saxon
resistance against the Vikings. Lament and melancholy are frequently present in
describing man's struggles against his environment, life's difficulties, and the passage of
time. Life is fleeting. Often a prologue and epilogue express hope in God's compassion
and mercy. Examples of such poems include "The Wanderer", "The Seafarer" and "The
Ruin". Other poems depict the separation of a man and a woman and the accompanying
sadness, such as in "The Wife's Lament" and "The Husband's Message". In these types of
poem the man may have been exiled and sometimes there is hope, sometimes not.
Collectively, Old English poems that lament the loss of worldly goods, glory, or human
companionship are called elegies. Beowulf is the best-known and best-preserved Old
English verse. Caedmon and Cynewulf were well-known Old English religious poets in
the 7th and 9th century respectively. Much Old English poetry is difficult to date and even
harder to assign to specific authors.

It falls broadly into two styles or fields of reference, the heroic Germanic and the
Christian. Almost all Old English poets are anonymous.
 Beowulf - Typical Old English Verse

Beowulf is an epic poem of over 3,000 verses, whose manuscript dates from about the
10th-century. The poem is the only epic from the time that has been preserved as a whole.
Its author is unknown, but he seems to have had a good grasp of the Bible and other great
epics, such as Homer's Odyssey.

As with other Old English literature, this epic incorporates both pagan and Christian
ideas. The monster-slaying hero has his origin in two ancient fairy tales. From the pagan
traditions also come a love of war and the virtue of courage. The biblical Old Testament
supplies the idea about giants and monsters having descended from Cain's line. The poem
is sometimes seen as a conflict between good and evil. From the Christian tradition, it
incorporates morality, obedience to God and avoidance of pride.

The work, written in characteristic Old English verse style, has artistic maturity and
unity. It uses alliteration (words beginning with the same sound), kennings (metaphorical
descriptive phrases or compound words), and internal rhyme (a word within a line
rhyming with a word at the end of the line). Each line has two beats or stressed syllables.
The style of poetical descriptions and word pictures with much repetition makes the action
move slowly.

The poem is an important source of historical information which was later confirmed
by archaeology. The tone and descriptions capture the rough, cold and gloomy North Sea
atmosphere, as well as life's struggles of the people of that time who had to deal with
many trials and obstacles. The poem was originally recited by a court singer and poet
called "scop", which accompanied it with music and made occasional changes according
to the inspiration of the moment.

Composition: Oral tradition

The theory proposes that certain features of at least some of the poetry may be explained
by positing oral-formulaic composition.

In addition to verbal formulas, many themes have been shown to appear among the
various works of Anglo-Saxon literature. The theory proposes to explain this fact by
suggesting that the poetry was composed of formulae and themes from a stock common
to the poetic profession, as well as literary passages composed by individual artists in a
more modern sense.
 Genres and themes:

Heroic poetry: The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals
with the Germanic heroic past. The longest and the most important, is Beowulf, which
appears in the damaged Nowell Codex. The poem tells the story of the legendary Geatish
hero Beowulf, who is the title character.

Old English heroic poetry was handed down orally from generation to generation. As
Christianity began to appear, re-tellers often recast the tales of Christianity into the older
heroic stories.

Elegiac poetry: Related to the heroic tales are a number of short poems from the Exeter
Book which have come to be described as “elegies” or “wisdom poetry”. They are lyrical
and Boethian in their description of the up and down fortunes of life.

Classical and Latin poetry: Several Old English poems are adaptations of late classical
philosophical texts.

Riddles: Anglo-Saxon riddles are part of Anglo-Saxon literature. The most famous
Anglo-Saxon riddles are found in the Exeter Book. This book contains secular and
religious poems and other writings, along with a collection of 94 riddles, although there
is speculation that there may have been closer to 100 riddles in the book. The riddles are
written in a similar manner, but "it is unlikely that the whole collection was written by
one person." It is more likely that many scribes worked on this collection of riddles.

Christian poetry:

Saints' lives: The Vercelli Book and Exeter Book contain four long narrative poems of
saints' lives, or hagiography. In Vercelli are Andreas and Elene and in Exeter are Guthlac
and Juliana.

Biblical paraphrases: There are a number of partial Old English Bible translations and
paraphrases surviving.

Original Christian poems: In addition to Biblical paraphrases are a number of original

religious poems, mostly lyrical (non-narrative).

The Exeter Book contains a series of poems entitled Christ, sectioned into Christ I,
Christ II and Christ III.
 Other poems: Other poetic forms exist in Old English including short verses, gnomes,
and mnemonic poems for remembering long lists of names.

There are short verses found in the margins of manuscripts which offer practical advice,
such as remedies against the loss of cattle or how to deal with a delayed birth, often
grouped as charms.

Features

Simile and metaphor: Anglo-Saxon poetry is marked by the comparative rarity of

similes. This is a particular feature of Anglo-Saxon verse style, and is a consequence both
of its structure and of the rapidity with which images are deployed, to be unable to
effectively support the expanded simile.

Alliteration: Old English poetry traditionally alliterates, meaning that a sound (usually
the initial consonant sound) is repeated throughout a line.

Variation: The Old English poet was particularly fond of describing the same person
or object with varied phrases, (often appositives) that indicated different qualities of that
person or object.

Caesura: Old English poetry, like other Old Germanic alliterative verse, is also
commonly marked by the caesura or pause. In addition to setting pace for the line, the
caesura also grouped each line into two couplets.

Litotes: the usage of litotes was important in works such as the Bible, the Iliad, and in
Old Norse sagas. Authors and speakers use litotes for many reasons, one of which is to
display restraint or display modesty in describing something of how incredible it is.
Litotes may also be used to downplay enthusiasm or as a witty way of making the reader
understand the opposite sentiment to the plainer one being expressed.

Prose:

Prose developed later than poetry, in the ninth century, but sometimes it also partly
contained the characteristics of poetry. It was influenced by Latin, the language of the
church and the educated. It consisted of factual, historical, and religious writings.

Of the surviving prose, the majority consists of sermons and translations. The division
of early medieval written prose works into categories of "Christian" and "secular", as
below, is for convenience's sake only, for literacy in Anglo-Saxon England was largely
the province of monks, nuns, and ecclesiastics.
 Christian prose: The most widely known secular author of Old English was King
Alfred the Great (849–899), who translated several books, many of them religious, from
Latin into Old English.

Secular prose: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably started in the time of King
Alfred the Great and continued for over 300 years as a historical record of Anglo-Saxon
history. A single example of a Classical romance has survived; it is a fragment of the
story of Apollonius of Tyre, from the 11th century.

Anglo-Saxon legal texts are a large and important part of the overall corpus. By the 12th
century they had been arranged into two large collections. There is also a large volume
of legal documents related to religious houses.

Reception

Old English literature did not disappear in 1066 with the Norman Conquest. Many
sermons and works continued to be read and used in part or whole up through the 14th
century, and were further catalogued and organized.

Because Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be written down,
nineteenth-century scholars searching for the roots of European "national culture" took
special interest in studying Anglo-Saxon literature, and Old English became a regular part
of university curriculum.

Old English literature has had some influence on modern literature, and notable poets
have translated and incorporated Old English poetry.

Sources:

www.wikipedia.org
www.bsu.by

Alumnas: Aguirre, Susana

Díaz, Sofía
Villalobo, Melisa