история языка / Anglo-Saxon Literature

Anglo-Saxon literature

Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses literature written in Old English from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry epic, hagiography (from Greek ἅγιος, "holy" or "saint“ and γραφή "writing"), Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts (Latin manu scriptus "written by hand“) from the period.

Most Old English poets are anonymous; twelve are known by name from Medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred and Cynewulf. Of these, only Caedmon, Bede, Alfred have known biographies.

• Caedmon is the best-known and considered the father of Old English poetry. He lived at the abbey of Whitby in Northumbria in the 7th century. Only a single nine line poem remains, called Hymn.

The very earliest scraps of English which we have today are runic inscriptions:

• the Ruthwell Cross (8^th. c.)- its runic alphabet inscription contains excerpts from the Dream of The Rood, an Old English poem

• Franks Casket (mid 7^th. c.) – is a small whalebone chest inscribed with Anglo-Saxon runes, reckoned to be of Northumbrian origin

Pre-Alfredian prose

• in the second half of the 7th c. most prose was then written in Latin rather than English;

• the Epinal Glossary = (the end of the 7^th. c.) – is the earliest Latin-Old English dictionary. It is now in Epinal, France.

• the Vespasian Psalter (8^th c. ) contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of a Bible. It was produced in Southern England.

Early West Saxon texts:

• Bald's Leechbook, a collection of medical recipes , probably compiled in the 9^th c. Under the influence of Alfred’s educational reforms

The Alfredian texts (commonly called Early West Saxon texts) (9^th c.):

• Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

• It is a collection of annals in Old English narrating the history of the Anglo-Saxons. It was created, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. Multiple manuscript copies were made and distributed to monasteries across England. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, and none of them is the original version. Almost all of the material in the chronicle is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC. The chronicle is the single important historical source for the period between the departure of the Romans and the Norman Conquest.

• the translation of the Cura pastoralis:

• The Book of the Pastoral Rule, commonly known in English as Pastoral Care

• It is a treatise on the responsibilities of the clergy written by Pope Gregory I around the year 590

• That the book had been sent taken to England by Augustine of Canterbury– who was sent to the Kingdom of Kent by Gregory in 597 – was noted in the preface to it written by Alfred, who in the 9^th c. translated it into Old English as part of a project to improve education in Anglo-Saxon England.

• Alfred's translation of Boethius:

• The Lays of Boethius is King Alfred’s Old English version of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

• Alfred wrote two versions . The first was a prose translation, while the second was a didactic poem

• The Lays are probably Alfred’s most important work

• the translation of Orosius' Historia adversum paganos

• the translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica

The work of Ælfric (wrote in the decades preceding and following the year 1000):

• Catholic Homilies

• Lives of the Saints

• Grammar - the only treatise on syntax and morphology which we have for the period

Ælfric's contemporaries:

• Wulfstan, archbishop of York (10^th c.);

• Aldred, who, based at Chester-le-Street near Durham in Northumbria, compiled an interlinear English gloss to the Latin text of the Lindisfarne Gospels, and also to other Latin religious texts.

OLD ENGLISH POETRY

The vast majority of Old English poetry is to be found in only four manuscripts, all compiled in the late 10th to early 11th c.:

• Beowulf Manuscript (British Library):

• Beowulf is an Old English heroic poem of anonymous authorship, dating between the 8th to the 11th c., and relates events described as having occurred in what is now Denmark and Sweden.

• The Junius Manuscript (Oxford):

• It is one of the 4 major Anglo-Saxon literature codices. It contains works known by the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan.

• The popular name of the codex is the Caedmon manuscript, after an early theory that the poems it contains might be the work of Caedmon – the earliest English poet - the name has stuck even though the theory is no longer considered credible.

• 'Junius' here is Franciscus Junius , - a pioneer of Germanic philology, a collector of ancient manuscripts - who published the first edition of its contents in 1655.

• The Exeter Book (Exeter, Cathedral Chapter Library):

• It is a tenth century book or codex which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry

• The Exeter Book is the largest known collection of Old English literature that exists today.

• Some examples:

• Juliana

• The Wanderer

• The Seafarer

• Widsith

• The Riming Poem

• Deor

• The Wife's Lament

• Homiletic Fragment II

• The Husband's Message

• The Ruin

• The Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Cathedral Library:

• The text is stored in the cathedral town for which it is named, in northern Italy

• It contains a group of 23 homilies, 6 poetic texts including "The Dream of the Rood" and two poems written by Cynewulf – an Anglo-Saxon poet, famous for his religious compositions

• Some examples:

• Andreas

• The Fates of the Apostles

• Soul and Body I

• Homiletic Fragment I

• Dream of the Rood

• Elene