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NBB AN128 K1 History of English Literature 1 DP Lecture 2 (2) Anglo-Saxon Literature – Pagan and/or Christian ca. 449-1066: Anglo-Saxon Period /Old English/. Invasion of Britain by related tribes of Germanic people – Angles, Saxons, Jutes; pagan and illiterate people, oral culture. Christianity from the 7th century on, literacy in Latin and in the vernacular, restricted mainly to servants of the church Anglo-Saxon Literature: from about the 8th century onwards; perhaps the richest literary heritage of early medieval Europe Heroic poetry, religious poetry, prose. Four manuscripts – MS Cotton Vitellius /British Museum/, Junius Manuscript /Bodleian, Oxford/, Exeter Book /Exeter Cathedral/, Vercelli Manuscript /Italy/ Reflecting a predominantly harsh world. Main themes: feasting in the mead hall – thinking of wars, of possible triumph and of more possible failure; the motif of romantic love is totally missing; praising the glory of God and His champions, lamenting the pain and sorrow of this world Style: special vocabulary – synonyms for lord, warrior, spear, shield etc., synecdoche and metonymy, kenning, irony, negatives, indirection /by apposition/. Alliterative verse – lines of four stresses and varying number of unstressed syllables, divided into two half-lines of two stresses by a marked caesura, linked by alliteration of stressed words. Oral origin, the scop, recorded in writing only later by scribes / x x / (x) || / x x / ‘Bid man of battle build me a tomb / x x / || x x / x x x / fair after fire, on the foreland by the sea Heroic poetry: closest connection with the Germanic origin of the invaders. Subject matter is drawn from earlier times, often from the common stock of Germanic heroes. The Germanic heroic society shows resemblances to the Hellenic world of Homer – nations are seen as groups of people related by kinship, the tribe is ruled by a chieftain called king, the king leads his men in battle, rewarding them afterwards, in return the retainers fight for him to the death, if the lord is slain, avenging him or dying in the attempt; blood vengeance, everlasting shame for those neglecting it. This society was already distant from Christian Anglo-Saxon England, and it was difficult to reconcile with Christianity; nevertheless, the Christian poets and scribes were still fascinated with their pagan ancestors. → Accommodation – preserving aspects not opposing the Christian ideal, omitting conflicting elements. Cf. ‘The Seafarer’ – result of good deeds can be good reputation after death (pagan reward) but also attainment of heavenly glory when the deeds are directed against the devil (Christian) Beowulf: a/the Germanic epic. The beginning of English literature. Epic, myth, folk tale, magic, human history, pagan and Christian elements; the frame: reconciliation of pagan and Christian. Beowulf as English literature – composed in England though the story and the character are taken from the common stock of Germanic heroes (‘The Fight at Finn’s Borough’ – a fragmentary account of events also mentioned in Beowulf, events the knowledge of which was taken for granted by the scop) ‘The Battle of Maldon’: the last great work. Byrthnoth, alderman of the East Saxons, heroically opposes Viking invaders. The motif of the ‘battle’ is employed as the vehicle for the presentation of the universal themes of responsibility and loyalty The elegies: a group of poems employing the heroic tone yet demonstrating a keen awareness of the transitory nature of this world. ‘The Wanderer’ (seeking a new protector after the death of the former one), ‘The Seafarer’ (life on the northern seas, fascination and harshness), The NBB AN128 K1 History of English Literature 1. DP Lecture 2 2 Ruin (a ruined city, desolation and decay set against the earlier prosperity of the place, fatalistic mood – the reverse of the heroic) Religious poetry: by the 8th century techniques of AS heroic poetry applied to purely Christian themes, consequently much of it cast in the heroic mood – Anglo-Saxons adapting themselves to the ideals of Christianity and adapting Christianity to their own heroic ideal. Examples of such reinterpretations: Christ as a “young hero” (‘The Dream of the Rood’), God as ‘mankind’s Guardian’ (Caedmon’s ‘Hymn’), St Helena as “battle-queen” (’Elene’). The significance of religious poetry: it provides a new development in English literature – turning away from old Germania, turning towards Latin Christianity – Christian Europe and its connections with classical Greco-Roman world, biblical stories connecting them with the Hebrew imagination. Caedmon (8th century) and Cynewulf (9th century; first English poet to sign his work). ‘Hymn’: the story of Creation. ‘Christ and Satan’: Caedmon’s school; a variety of Christian traditions, representing Satan not as a defiant spirit but as a lost soul lamenting his exclusion from the eternal joys of Heaven; didactic function – difference between Heaven and Hell, between the results of following Christ or Satan. ‘The Phoenix’: Cynewulf’s school; the fabulous bird treated as an allegory of the life of the virtuous in this world and in the next, the image of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection Caedmon’s ‘Hymn’ Now we must praise the Keeper of Heaven’s Kingdom, The Maker’s might, and His conception, The deed of the Father of Glory; as He of all wonders - The Eternal Lord - established the beginning. He first created for the children of men Heaven as roof, the Holy Shaper; Then Middle Earth did Mankind’s Keeper, The Eternal Lord, afterward ordain, The earth of men, the Almighty Lord. Anglo-Saxon prose: King Alfred: ‘father of English prose’ – yet prose works even before his time. Before: Bede /The Venerable Bede/: An Ecclesiastical History of the English People – the history of England after the arrival of St. Augustine in 597; the idea of history as a moral pattern shaped by the hand of God. Alfred: realising the importance of vernacular translations, fascination with literature (recounted by Bishop Asser, his Welsh biographer and friend in his Life of King Alfred). King Alfred himself doing translations /Boethius: De Consolatione Philosophiae, Augustine: Soliloquies/, ordering the beginnings of The AngloSaxon Chronicle