Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England.Henry Bradley, John Manly, Oliver Elton and Thomas Seccombe (1911). "English Literature". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 9. (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 607-645. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid-12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
In descending order of quantity, Old English literature consists of: sermons and saints' lives; biblical translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical works on grammar, medicine, and geography; and poetry. In all, there are over 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, of which about 189 are considered major. In addition, some Old English text survives on stone structures and ornate objects.
The poem Beowulf, which often begins the traditional canon of English literature, is the most famous work of Old English literature. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has also proven significant for historical study, preserving a chronology of early English history.
In addition to Old English literature, Anglo-Latin works comprise the largest volume of literature from the Early Middle Ages in England.
Extant manuscripts
Over 400 manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during the 9th to 11th centuries. There were considerable losses of manuscripts as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.
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.
Paleography and codicology Manuscripts written in both Latin and the vernacular remain. Early Anglo-Saxon texts used styles of scripts borrowed from Irish missionaries, which include the Insular half-uncial (used for important Latin texts) and Insular minuscule (used for both Latin and the vernacular). In the 10th century, the Caroline minuscule was adopted for Latin; however, the Insular minuscule continued to be used for Old English texts. Thereafter, it was increasingly influenced by Caroline minuscule, while retaining certain distinctively Insular letter-forms.
Early English manuscripts often contain later annotations in the margins of the texts; it is a rarity to find a completely unannotated manuscript. These include corrections, alterations and expansions of the main text, as well as commentary upon it, and even unrelated texts. The majority of these annotations appear to date to the 13th century and later.
Scriptoria Seven major scriptoria produced a good deal of Old English manuscripts: Winchester; Exeter; Worcester; Abingdon; Durham; and two Canterbury houses, Christ Church and St. Augustine's Abbey.
Dialects Regional dialects include Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, and West Saxon, leading to the speculation that much of the poetry may have been translated into West Saxon at a later date. An example of the dominance of the West Saxon dialect is a pair of charters, from the Stowe and British Museum collections, which outline grants of land in Kent and Mercia, but are nonetheless written in the West Saxon dialect of the period.
Poetic codices There are four major poetic manuscripts: The Junius manuscript, also known as the Cædmon manuscript, is an illustrated collection of poems on biblical narratives. It is held at the Bodleian Library, with the shelfmark MS. Junius 11. The Exeter Book is an anthology which brings together riddles and longer texts. It has been held at the Exeter Cathedral library since it was donated there in the 11th century by Bishop Leofric, and has the shelfmark Exeter Dean and Chapter Manuscript 3501. The Vercelli Book contains both poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be in Vercelli, in the north of Italy. The Nowell Codex (British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv), sometimes called the Beowulf Manuscript, contains prose and poetry, typically dealing with monstrous themes, including Beowulf.
Poetry
Form and style The most distinguishing feature of Old English poetry is its alliterative verse style.
The Anglo-Latin verse tradition in early medieval England was accompanied by discourses on Latin prosody, which were 'rules' or guidance for writers. The rules of Old English verse are understood only through modern analysis of the extant texts.
The first widely accepted theory was constructed by Eduard Sievers (1893), who distinguished five distinct alliterative patterns. His system of alliterative verse is based on accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme; any one of the five types can be used in any verse. The system was inherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic languages.
Alternative theories have been proposed, such as the theory of John C. Pope (1942), which uses musical notation to track the verse patterns. J. R. R. Tolkien describes and illustrates many of the features of Old English poetry in his 1940 essay "On Translating Beowulf.
Alliteration and assonance
Old English poetry alliterates, meaning that a sound is repeated throughout a line, generally taken from the first syllable of the first stressed word in a line. Alliteration is based on sound rather than letter. For instance, in the first line of The Wanderer, "Oft him anhaga are gebideð", "Often the loner finds grace for himself", the 'o' of 'oft', and 'a' in 'anhaga' and 'are' all alliterate. Prefixes such as 'ge-' are always unstressed and therefore not part of alliterative patterns, while consonant clusters, for example 'st' or 'sp', may only alliterate with themselves, not any word beginning with 's'.
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 hemistichs.
Metaphor Kennings are a key feature of Old English poetry. A kenning is an often formulaic metaphorical phrase that describes one thing in terms of another: for instance, in Beowulf, the sea is called hronrad, or "whale road" (Seamus Heaney's translation).
Old English poetry is marked by the comparative rarity of similes. Beowulf contains at best five similes, and these are of the short variety.
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. For instance, the Beowulf poet refers in three and a half lines to a Danish king as "lord of the Danes" (referring to the people in general), "king of the Scyldings" (the name of the specific Danish tribe), "giver of rings" (one of the king's functions is to distribute treasure), and "famous chief". Such variation, which the modern reader (who likes verbal precision) is not used to, is frequently a difficulty in producing a readable translation.
Litotes Litotes is a form of dramatic understatement employed by the author for ironic effect.
Oral tradition
Even though all extant Old English poetry is written and literate, many scholars propose that Old English poetry was an oral craft that was performed by a scop and accompanied by a harp.
The hypotheses of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on the Homeric Question came to be applied (by Parry and Lord, but also by Francis Magoun) to verse written in Old English. That is, the theory proposes that certain features of at least some of the poetry may be explained by positing oral-formulaic composition. While Old English epic poetry may bear some resemblance to Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey, the question of if and how Anglo-Saxon poetry was passed down through an oral tradition remains a subject of debate, and the question for any particular poem unlikely to be answered with perfect certainty.
Parry and Lord had already demonstrated the density of metrical formulas in Ancient Greek, and observed the same feature in the Old English alliterative line:
Hroþgar maþelode helm Scildinga ("Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scildings") Beoƿulf maþelode bearn Ecgþeoƿes ("Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow")
In addition to verbal formulas, many themes have been shown to appear among the various works of Anglo-Saxon literature. The theory suggests a reason for this: 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. Larry Benson introduced the concept of "written-formulaic" to describe the status of some Anglo-Saxon poetry which, while demonstrably written, contains evidence of oral influences, including heavy reliance on formulas and themes. Frequent oral-formulaic themes in Old English poetry include "Beasts of Battle" and the "Cliff of Death". The former, for example, is characterised by the mention of ravens, eagles, and wolves preceding particularly violent depictions of battle. Among the most thoroughly documented themes is "The Hero on the Beach". D. K. Crowne first proposed this theme, defined by four characteristics: A Hero on the Beach. Accompanying "Retainers". A Flashing Light. The Completion or Initiation of a Journey.
One example Crowne cites in his article is that which concludes Beowulf's fight with the monsters during his swimming match with Breca:
+ Beowulf (562-570a) Modern English West Saxon Those sinful creatures had nofill of rejoicing that they consumed me,assembled at feast at the sea bottom;rather, in the morning, wounded by bladesthey lay up on the shore, put to sleep by swords,so that never after did they hinder sailorsin their course on the sea.The light came from the east,the bright beacon of God. Næs hie ðære fyllemanfordædlan,symbel ymbsætonac on mergennebe yðlafesƿeordum asƿefede,ymb brontnelade ne letton.beorht beacen godes; / gefean hæfdon,/ þæt hie me þegon,/ sægrunde neah;/ mecum ƿunde/ uppe lægon,/ þæt syðþan na/ ford brimliðende/ Leoht eastan com,/ ...
Crowne drew on examples of the theme's appearance in twelve Old English texts, including one occurrence in Beowulf. It was also observed in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga. John Richardson held that the schema was so general as to apply to virtually any character at some point in the narrative, and thought it an instance of the "threshold" feature of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey monomyth. J.A. Dane, in an article (characterised by Foley as "polemics without rigour") claimed that the appearance of the theme in Ancient Greek poetry, a tradition without known connection to the Germanic, invalidated the notion of "an autonomous theme in the baggage of an oral poet." Foley's response was that Dane misunderstood the nature of oral tradition, and that in fact the appearance of the theme in other cultures showed that it was a traditional form.
Poets Most Old English poems are recorded without authors, and very few names are known with any certainty; the primary three are Cædmon, Aldhelm, and Cynewulf.
Bede