o St. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
731
o English was first written in the year 600 when king Ethelred of
Kent was persuaded by St. Augustine of Canterbury that needed a written
law-code; it was written with Roman alphabets.
o Bede and Caedmon (670) are earliest known manuscript. They were
read and properly published between middle ages and reign of Queen Victoria.
o The Angels, the Saxons and the Jutes were illiterate; their
orally composed verses were not written unless they formed part of runic
inscription.
o Insular, the term is used
to define the literature of this period; the art of islands is distinctive, but
mixed of origins, Celtic Mediterranean and Germanic.
o First know English Poet was Aldhelm (640-709)
o Five early known poets are Aldhelm, Bede, Caedmon, Alfred-
two saints, a cowman and a king- and Cynewulf.
o Waldere is an early poem features the heroics of Walters’s defense
of a narrow place against his enemies.
o Finnshbrush, set on the continent, is vividly dramatic
fragment of a fight in Beowulf.
o The Liturgy is the source of poems like Christian, and
contribution to the poem ‘The Dream of the Rood’. It is a religious service.
o Alfred (819), king of Wessex from 817, who defend his kingdom
against the Danes and translated wisdom books into English.
o The Anglo Saxon Chronicle.
o Beowulf with 3182 verses is the longest as well as the
richest of Old English poems. The poem found in a manuscript of 10th
century and composed perhaps two centuries earlier. The poem opens mysterious
figure of Scyld, founder of the Scylding dynasty of Denmark.
o Piers (Peter’s) Plowman, a dream poem in alliterative
style. It opens in Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.
o Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the finest English
verse romance. The Green Knight, a green giant with a huge axe offer to blow in
a year time. Gawain, the volunteer to save the honour of his uncle Arthur and
of the Round table. Beheaded by Gawain, the green knight picks up his severed
head from among the felt of the dines.
o John Gower’s book- Mirror of the Mankind, a long didactic
poem in French. Vos Clamantis- a Latin poem in the social evils of the
day. His English poem Confessio Amantis (A Lovers Confession).
o Some Gower tale again told by Chaucer in his Wife of Bath tells
Gower’s tale of Loathy Bride and Chaucer’s Man of Law tell that of Gower’s
Constance.
o ‘The dream of the Rood’- the dreamer in the poem sees at
midnight a glorious rise to fill the sky worshiped by all of creation. It is
covered with gold and Jewels, but at other time covered with bold. The lord in
the dream is an Anglo-Saxon hero, keen to join the battle with death, ‘Stand
fast I must.’
o Hence poem ‘Waldere’, ‘Deor’, ‘Widsmith’ (far traveler). ‘Widsmith’
is a name of a scop (poet) who lists the name of the continental tribes and
their rulers, praising generous patrons. Deor (poet) who lost his position to
console himself.
o In the Anglo-Saxon chronicle (757) we find evidence of narrative
tradition in the story of Cynewoulf and Cyeheard.
o
Alfred establishes
English as a literature language. The books he has translated were Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History, Orosius’ Histories, Gregory’s Pastoral Care and
Augustries’ Soliloquies and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy.
o
Alfred’s
thoughtfulness is evident in his two famous Preface, ‘Pastoral Care’ and
‘Augustan Soliloquies’.
o
Beowulf is a epic
poem with 3182 verses. Opens with the mysterious figure Scyld, founder of the
Scylding dynasty of Denmark, who have lived c. 400 before England existed. A Hengest
mentioned in a sub-story of the poem may be the Hengest invited into Kent. The
Offa is mentioned may be an ancestor of Offa, king of Mercia (8th
Century).
o
Ezra Pound’s
spirited version of ‘The Seafarer’ (1912) expresses the isolation and
the ardour. It should be read for the feel of the verse rather than for the
poem’s Christian sense, which Pound thought a later addition and cut out.
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