42. Oe, its literary monuments.

The historical sources and the archeological evidence agree that the major influx of Germanic immigration into England came in the mid-fifth century. They refer to a British tyrant, who invited the Saxons, under leaders Hengest and Horsa, to help his country resist attacks from barbarian Picts and Scots. If this story is true, the invitation was a gross miscalculation.

According to Bede, the forebears of the Anglo-Saxons came from three great Germanic groups on the Continent: the Saxons, the Angles, who lived north of the Saxons on the Jutland Peninsula, in modern Schleswig, and the Jutes, who are supposed to have lived north of the Angles, also on the Jutland Peninsula. Although the Germanic invaders must at first have had little greater organization than isolated war bands, they quickly united into larger territorial groups under kings. Seven kingdoms were set up on the territory of what we call now England. The centers of power in Anglo-Saxon England were to rest in the three kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. These were the kingdoms on the northerly and westerly frontiers of the area under Anglo-Saxon control. Their constant border wars with Picts, Scots and British kept their armies in fighting shape. The other kingdoms were Kent, Sussex, East Anglia and Essex. These kingdoms were often at war with each other, and especially with great powers, Wessex and Mercia. Ironically, Viking attacks were to lead to a permanently united English kingdom under Wessex in the ninth century. Due to the talents of King Alfred the Great, his overcoming the Danes in 886, he was recognized as the overlord of all the English not subject to the Danes. He entered into a formal treaty with the Danes, in order to extract from them the best possible treatment of the English living in Danish-dominated territories.

Old English literatureis second only to Old Norse in the volume and variety of texts.

Poetry. The dialect of Old English, in which it was written was West Saxon, with occasional Anglian and Northumbrian forms.

Beowulf (eighth century). The central character is the legendary Geatish hero, for whom the poem is named, and its central episodes are three fights that Beowulf has with various monsters in order to save allies, kin, and country.

In addition to Beowulf, there are a number of other (shorter) examples of secular heroic poetry in Old English. These include a fragment dealing with a battle between Danes and Frisians, known as Fight at Finnsburg; another fragment dealing with the story of Walter of Aquitaine, known as the Waldere; and two later poems dealing with historic battles against Anglo-Saxon enemies: The Battle of Brunanburh, and The Battle of Maldon.

Prose. Before the reign of King Alfred the Great (871-99), prose writing in Anglo-Saxon England was primarily in Latin. When the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons commenced at the end of the sixth century, Latin writing began among English. The earliest documented texts are saints’ lives. Eighth century is associated with the Venerable Bede (673-735), a Nothumbrian monk. Besides his saints’ lives, Bede wrote treatises on Latin Grammar, metric and rhetoric, commentaries on the scriptures, and the like. Most important work of his is the Ecclesiastical History of the English people. He gives a detailed account of the history of the Church in England, and the early history of the Anglo-Saxons.

The most striking literary product credited to Alfred’s time is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This is the history of Anglo-Saxons beginning with the birth of Christ, and continuing to the year 1154.