Medieval English literature

ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE

The Anglo-Saxon invaders who came to Britain in the 5th and 6th century, were the founders of English Culture and English literature. They gave England its name, its language. The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes pushed the Romanized Britons into western corners of England (Celts – part of them survived as Welsh). This new barbarian society reflected heroic ideals.

1) Heroic poetry

Surviving A.S. literature bring us most closely into contact with the Germanic origins of the invaders. It is written in Old English or Anglo-Saxon (Engl. language in an earlier stage of its development, with inglections which have since disappeared, a relatively small vocabulary from which many words have since been lost).

 the verse is alliterative and stressed, without rhyme, each line containing 4 stressed syllables and a varying number unstressed. There is a definite pause (caesura) between the 2 halves of each line, with 2 stresses in each line.

2 halves of each line are connected by alliteration which means that syllables connected in this way begin with the same consonant, groups of consonants: sp, st, sc or any vowel. Words that are accented or words bearing alliteration are usually nouns, adjectives and rearly verbs and adverbs.

30 000 lines of A.S. poetry have survived – contained in 4 manuscripts:

1. Cotton Vitelius: in British Museum – containing Beowulf, Judith + 3 prose works
2. The Junius Manuscript – religious poems
3. The Exeter Book – Widsith, Wanderer, etc.
4. The Vercelli Book

Heroic poetry celebrates war, bravery, loyality of soldiers. The style is severe and solemn. We do not know much about OE culture (place names, certain localities). Anglo-Saxon poetry is the nearest we can get to the oral pagan literature of the Heroic Age of Germania. The stressed alliterative verse is the product of an oral court minstrels; it was intended to be receited by the Scop, the minstrel who frequented the halls of Kings.