3. The Anglo-Saxon Period: the beginning of English Literature

English literature began as oral, not written, literature, with songs and poems celebrating heroes. These poems were passed on by minstrels, or scops, who composed many poems that praised Anglo-Saxon ideals. Probably most important of these ideals were valor(доблесть), honor, and loyality to one’s lord. This was primarily a somber(мрачное) time in which human destiny was believed to be ruled by fate.

Through the songs of the scops, the major battles and the feats (подвиги) of the tribe’s heroes and kings were recited (рассказаны) and remembered. The scops’ poems often reflect the grim, war-ridden lives of the Anglo-Saxon people. By immortalizingtheir heroes, the scops also brought a semblance (подобие) of permanence to a world ruled by a sense of transience (быстротечность) and fatal doom.

The earliest English story-poem to come down to us is about a hero called Beowulf. Beowulf was composed about 700 by an unknown minstrel, one of the many who traveled from mead hall to entertain the courts of kings and their warriors. The poem was composed in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, a dialect of Germanic origin that is the ancestor of our present-day English and was brought to Britain by an Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf is example of epic, a long narrative poem in grave (выгравированная) and stately language about the achievements of a hero, often a national heroic figure. Ancient Greece and Rome had their great epics.

Few of the other poems of this period have survived . One of these poems is ‘The Seafarer’ unusual for its lyric tone and its nonreligious subject matter.

Written literature did not exist in the British Isles until about the year 700. It first comes to our attention in the work of the most famous of the Anglo-Saxon monks, the Venerable Bede, author of Ecclesiastical History of the English people. One of the famous people Bede wrote about in his History was Caedmon, a shepherd who became a monk and the first English religious poet.

Although Bede was Anglo-Saxon, he wrote his History in Latin. The first notable written literature actually composed in Old English came almost two centuries later when the remarkable Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great wrote his Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, also a history in the year 892.

4. Anglo-Saxon epic poetry

English literature may be said to begin with Beowulf, a poem written over twelve hundreed years ago. Composed around 700, it existed for future ages in only one original manuscript, made 300 years later. The poem presents the legendary history of the Anglo-Saxons, and its author would have been descended from original tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes who invaded Britain from the European continent in the fifth century. Those people spoke the Germanic language in which the poem is written.

Like the Iliad or the Odyssey of ancient Greece, Beowulf is an epic. An epic is a long narrative poem that records, in grave and stately language, the exploits(деяния) of a larger-than-life hero who usually embodies national ideals. This great Anglo-Saxon epic described the achievements of their courageous ancestor, Beowulf ‘the strongest man who ever lived’. Beowulf had lived several hundred years earlier, at a time before the Germanic tribes had emigrated from Europe. Thus, the poem is set on the European mainland, in what is modern Denmark and Sweden

Elements of epic:

• plot centres around a hero of unbelievable stature. The epic hero completes what everyone only attempts. In ancient epics, the hero often is either partially divine or at least protected by God

• Involves deeds of superhuman strenght and valor. Accomplish fets no real human could

• Vast setting. The action spans not only geographical but also often cosmological space: across land, sea, into the underworld

• Involves supernatural and-or otherwordly forces. Gods, demons, angels etc

• Sustained elevation of style. Overwritten. Overly formal, highly stylized (poetry, lyricism)

• Poet remains objective and omniscient. The narrator sees and knows all and presents all perspectives

5. Anglo-Saxon lyric poetry

Only a scant (скудный) 30000 lines of the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons have survived, and more than a tenth of that is made up by Beowulf. Because monks were almost the only people who knew how to write then, it should not be surprising that much of the remainder (остаток) is religious poetry. A few speciments of the poetry that has survived are, nevertheless, not religious, treating such subjects as a battle and a lament of the woman for her absent husband.

‘The Seafarer’ is another example of such secular, or nonreligious, Old English poetry. An anonymous poem included in The Exeter Book, a famous collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry compiled in about 975, ;The Seafarer’ is especially noteworthy for its lyrical nature. It expresses the emotions of an old sailor who realizes the sadness of life, its difficulties, and its brief duration. In expressing his feelings the speaker also portrays the miseries and attractions of life on the Irish and North seas. Of the 123 lines that make up the complete poem, the most representative portions follow.