Lesson 11-12. The Anglo-Saxon Literature
Poetry
Much of the Old English Christian poetry is marked by the simple belief of a relatively unsophisticated Christianity; the names of two authors are known. Caedmon —whose story is charmingly told by the Venerable Bede, who also records a few lines of his poetry—is the earliest known English poet. Although the body of his work has been lost, the school of C^dmon is responsible for poetic narrative versions of biblical stories, the most dramatic of which is probably Genesis B.
Cynewulf, a later poet, signed the poems Elene, Juliana, and The Fates of the Apostles; no more is known of him. The finest poem of the school of Cynewulf is The Dream of the Rood, the first known example of the dream vision, a genre later popular in Middle English Literature. Other Old English poems include various riddles, charms (magic cures, pagan in origin), saints' lives, gnomic poetry, and other Christian and heroic verse.
The verse form for Old English poetry is an alliterative line of four stressed syllables and an unfixed number of unstressed syllables broken by a caesura and arranged in one of several patterns. Lines are conventionally end-stopped and unrhymed. The form lends itself to narrative; there is no lyric poetry in Old English. A stylistic feature in this heroic poetry is the kenning, a figurative phrase, often a metaphorical compound, used as a synonym for a simple noun, e.g., the repeated use of the phrases whale-road for sea and twilight-spoiler for dragon.
Prose
Old English literary prose dates from the latter part of the Anglo-Saxon period. Prose was written in Latin before the reign of King Alfred (reigned 871-99), who worked to revitalize English culture after the devastating Danish invasions ended. As hardly anyone could read Latin, Alfred translated or had translated the most important Latin texts. He also encouraged writing in the vernacular. Didactic, devotional, and informative prose was written, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, probably begun in Alfred's time as an historical record, continued for over three centuries. Two preeminent Old English prose writers were ^lfric[1],Abbot of Eynsham, and his contemporary Wulfstan, d. 1023, English churchman, archbishop of York (1003-1023) and bishop of Worcester, whose Latin name was Lupus. He is buried at Ely. Homilies are attributed to him, but most of them are doubtful; from them as from those of ^lfric written for Wulfstan, many details of English law were derived. A homily on the millennium in English alliterative prose, styled Lupi sermo ad Anglos is usually ascribed to him. Their sermons (written in the late 10th or early 11th cent.) set a standard for homiletics.
A great deal of Latin prose and poetry was written during the Anglo-Saxon period. Of historic as well as literary interest, it provides an excellent record of the founding and early development of the church in England and reflects the introduction and early influence there of Latin-European culture.
Old English literature is part of English literature, and some of it deserves discussion here on literary merit. Besides merit, it needed luck, the luck to be committed to writing, and to survive. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes were illiterate: their orally-composed verses were not written unless they formed part of runic inscriptions. The Britons passed on neither literacy nor faith to their conquerors. The English learned to write only after they had been converted to Christ by missionaries sent from Rome in 597. Strictly, there is no Old English writing that is not Christian, since the only literates were clerics.
Bede is one of the five early English poets whose names are known: Aldhelm, Bede, C.dmon, Alfred - two saints, a cowman and a king - and Cynewulf, who signed his poems but is otherwise unknown. Oral composition was not meant to be written. A poem was a social act, like telling a story today, not a thing which belonged to its performer. For a Saxon to write down his vernacular poems would be like having personal anecdotes privately printed, whereas to write Latin was to
participate in the lasting conversation of learned Europe. Bede’s works survive in manuscripts across Europe and in Russia.
The modern way of dating years AD - Anno Domini, ‘the Year of Our Lord’ - was established, if not devised, by Bede. Bede employed this system in his History, instead of dating by the regnal years peculiar to each English kingdom as was the custom at the time. His example led to its general adoption. Bede is the only English writer mentioned by Dante, and the first whose works have been read in every generation since they were written. The first writer of whom this is true is Chaucer.
English literature is literature in English; all that is discussed here of Bede’s Latin History is its account of Caedmon. But we can learn something about literature from the account of the final acts of Bede, a professional writer. This shows that composing came before writing: Bede composed and sang his ‘Death Song’ after singing the verse of St Paul upon which it was based. Composition was not origination but re-creation: handing-on, performance. These features of composition lasted through the Middle Ages, and beyond.
Caedmon was the first to use English oral composition to turn sacred story into verse; the English liked verse. Bede presents the calling of this unlearned man to compose biblical poetry as a miraculous means for bringing the good news to the English. He tells us that C.dmon was a farmhand at the abbey at Whitby, which was presided over by St Hilda (d.680), an old man ignorant of poetry. At feasts when all in turn were invited to compose verses to the harp and entertain the company, Caedmon, when he saw the harp coming his way, would get up from table and go home. On one such occasion he left the house where the feast was being held, and went out to the stable where it was his duty that night to look after the beasts. There when the time came he settled down to sleep. Suddenly in a dream he saw a certain man standing beside him who called him by name. ‘C.dmon’, he said, ‘sing me a song.’ ‘I don’t know how to sing,’ he replied. ‘It was because I cannot sing that I left the feast and came here.’ The man who addressed him then said: ‘But you shall sing to me.’ ‘What should I sing about?’ he replied. ‘Sing about the Creation of all things,’ the other answered. And C.dmon immediately began to sing verses in praise of God the Creator that he had never heard before, and their theme ran thus.
Bede gives C.dmon’s song in Latin, adding ‘This the general sense, but not the actual words that C.dmon sang in his dream; for verses, however masterly, cannot be translated word for word from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity.’ The old man remembered what he had sung and added more in the same style. Next day the monks told him about a passage of scriptural history or doctrine, and he turned this overnight into excellent verses. He sang of the Creation, Genesis, and of Exodus and other stories of biblical history, including the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost and the teaching of the apostles, and many other religious songs. The monks surely wrote all this down, though Bede says only that ‘his delightful renderings turned his instructors into auditors’.
In 1655 the Dutch scholar Junius published in Amsterdam ‘The monk C.dmon’s paraphrase of Genesis etc.’, based on a handsome Old English manuscript containing Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan. The poems are probably not by Caedmon, but follow his example.
English is a stressed language, and the Old English verse line is a balance of two-stress phrases linked by alliteration: the first or second stress, or both, must alliterate with the third; the fourth must not. Old English verse is printed with a mid-line space to point the metre. Free oral improvisation in a set form requires a repertory of formulaic units. The style is rich in formulas, often noun-phrases. Thus in the nine lines of his ‘Hymn’ C.dmon has six different formulas for God, a feature known as variation. The image of heaven as a roof and of the Lord as protector is characteristically Anglo-Saxon.
Beowulf
Though it is often viewed both as the archetypal Anglo-Saxon literary work and as a cornerstone of modern literature, Beowulf has a peculiar history that complicates both its historical and its canonical position in English literature. By the time the story was composed by an unknown Anglo-Saxon poet around 700 a.d., much of its material had been in circulation in oral narrative for many years. The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples had invaded the island of Britain and settled there several hundred years earlier, bringing with them several closely related Germanic languages that would evolve into Old English. Elements of the Beowulf story—including its setting and characters—date back to the period before the migration. The action of the poem takes place around 500 a.d. Many of the characters in the poem—the Swedish and Danish royal family members, for example—correspond to actual historical figures. Originally pagan warriors, the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invaders experienced a large-scale conversion to Christianity at the end of the sixth century. Though still an old pagan story, Beowulf thus came to be told by a Christian poet. The Beowulf poet is often at pains to attribute Christian thoughts and motives to his characters, who frequently behave in distinctly un-Christian ways. The Beowulf that we read today is therefore probably quite unlike the Beowulf with which the first Anglo-Saxon audiences were familiar. The element of religious tension is quite common in Christian Anglo-Saxon writings (The Dream of the Rood, for example), but the combination of a pagan story with a Christian narrator is fairly unusual. The plot of the poem concerns Scandinavian culture, but much of the poem's narrative intervention reveals that the poet's culture was somewhat different from that of his ancestors and that of his characters as well.
Like Greek literature, English literature begins with an epic, a poem of historic scope telling of heroes and of the world, human and non-human. Compared with the epics of Homer, Beowulf is short, with 3182 verses, yet it is the longest as well as the richest of Old English poems. Like other epics, it has a style made for oral composition, rich in formulas. The poem is found in a manuscript of the late 10th century, but was composed perhaps two centuries earlier, and it is set in a world more than two centuries earlier still, on the coasts of the Baltic. This was the north-west Germanic world from which the English had come to Britain.
... from the east came Angles and Saxons up to these shores,
Seeking Britain across the broad seas,
Smart for glory, those smiths of war
That overcame the Welsh, and won a homeland.
The first great work of English literature is not set in Britain. Beowulf opens with the mysterious figure of Scyld, founder of the Scylding dynasty of Denmark, who would have lived c. 400, before England existed. A Hengest mentioned in a sub-story of the poem may be the Hengest invited into Kent in 449 (see page 13). The Offa who is mentioned may be an ancestor of Offa, king of Mercia in the 8th century.
Beowulf showed the English the world of their ancestors, the heroic world of the north, a world both glorious and heathen.
Dynasties take their identity from their ancestors, and the rulers of the English kingdoms ruled by right of ancestral conquest.
The date and provenance of Beowulf are uncertain, and its authorship unknown, but the poem would have had ancestral interest to such a ruler. West-Saxon genealogies go back to Noah via Woden; they include three names mentioned in Beowulf - Scyld, Scef and Beow. When in the 7th century the English became Christian they sent missionaries to their Germanic cousins. The audience for poetry was the lord of the hall and the men of his retinue. Such an audience was proud of its ancestors - even if, as the poem says of the Danes, ‘they did not know God’.
The text of Beowulf is found in a manuscript in the West-Saxon dialect of Wessex
na in gear dagum theod cyninga thrym ge frunon hu tha.thelingas ellen fremedon...
Word-for-word:
Listen! We of the Spear-Danes
in days of yore, of the kings of the people
the glory have heard, how those princes did
deeds of valour.
The irregular outline of the leaf is due to fire-damage in 1731which had become the literary standard. All the texts in the manuscript are about monsters, but the prime concern of Beowulf is not with monsters or even heroes but with human wisdom and destiny. It recounts the doings over two or three generations about the year 500 of the rulers of the Danes and the Swedes, and of a people who lived between them in southern Sweden, the Geats. The name Beowulf is not recorded in history, but the political and dynastic events of the poem are consistent with history. Beowulf is the nephew of Hygelac, King of the Geats, who died in a raid on the northern fringe of the Frankish empire.
Beowulf is often referred to as the first important work of literature in English, even though it was written in Old English, an ancient form of the language that slowly evolved into the English now spoken. Compared to modern English, Old English is heavily Germanic, with little influence from Latin or French.
In addition to these rules, Old English poetry often features a distinctive set of rhetorical devices. The most common of these is the kenning, used throughout Beowulf. A kenning is a short metaphorical description of a thing used in place of the thing's name; thus a ship might be called a "sea-rider," or a king a "ring-giver." Some translations employ kennings almost as frequently as they appear in the original. Others moderate the use of kennings in deference to a modern sensibility. But the Old English version of the epic is full of them, and they are perhaps the most important rhetorical device present in Old English poetry.
Plot Overview
King Hrothgar of Denmark, a descendant of the great king Shield Sheafson, enjoys a prosperous and successful reign. He builds a great mead-hall, called Heorot, where his warriors can gather to drink, receive gifts from their lord, and listen to stories sung by the scops, or bards. But the jubilant noise from Heorot angers Grendel, a horrible demon who lives in the swamplands of Hrothgar's kingdom. Grendel terrorizes the Danes every night, killing them and defeating their efforts to fight back. The Danes suffer many years of fear, danger, and death at the hands of Grendel. Eventually, however, a young Geatish warrior named Beowulf hears of Hrothgar's plight. Inspired by the challenge Beowulf sails to Denmark with a small company of men determined to defeat Grendel.
Hrothgar, who had once done a great favor for Beowulf's father Ecgtheow, accepts Beowulf's offer to fight Grendel and holds a feast in the hero's honor. During the feast, an envious Dane named Unferth taunts Beowulf and accuses him of being unworthy of his reputation. Beowulf responds with a boastful description of some of his past accomplishments. His confidence cheers the Danish warriors, and the feast lasts merrily into the night. At last, however, Grendel arrives. Beowulf fights him unarmed, proving himself stronger than the demon, who is terrified. As Grendel struggles to escape, Beowulf tears the monster's arm off. Mortally wounded, Grendel slinks back into the swamp to die. The severed arm is hung high in the mead-hall as a trophy of victory.
Overjoyed, Hrothgar showers Beowulf with gifts and treasure at a feast in his honour. Songs are sung in praise of Beowulf, and the celebration lasts late into the night. But another threat is approaching. Grendel's mother, a swamp-hag who lives in a desolate lake, comes to Heorot seeking revenge for her son's death. She murders Aeschere, one of Hrothgar's most trusted advisers, before slinking away. To avenge Aeschere's death, the company travels to the murky swamp, where Beowulf dives into the water and fights Grendel's mother in her underwater lair. He kills her with a sword forged for a giant, then, finding Grendel's corpse, decapitates it and brings the head as a prize to Hrothgar. The Danish countryside is now purged of its treacherous monsters.
The Danes are again overjoyed, and Beowulf's fame spreads across the kingdom. Beowulf departs after a sorrowful goodbye to Hrothgar, who has treated him like a son. He returns to Geatland, where he and his men are reunited with their king and queen, Hygelac and Hygd, to whom Beowulf recounts his adventures in Denmark. Beowulf then hands over most of his treasure to Hygelac, who, in turn, rewards him.
In time, Hygelac is killed in a war against the Shylfings, and, after Hygelac's son dies, Beowulf ascends to the throne of the Geats. He rules wisely for fifty years, bringing prosperity to Geatland. When Beowulf is an old man, however, a thief disturbs a barrow, or mound, where a great dragon lies guarding a horde of treasure. Enraged, the dragon emerges from the barrow and begins unleashing fiery destruction upon the Geats. Sensing his own death approaching, Beowulf goes to fight the dragon. With the aid of Wiglaf, he succeeds in killing the beast, but at a heavy cost. The dragon bites Beowulf in the neck and its fiery venom kills him moments after their encounter. The Geats fear that their enemies will attack them now that Beowulf is dead. According to Beowulf's wishes, they burn their departed king's body on a huge funeral pyre and then bury him with a massive treasure in a barrow overlooking the sea:
Then the warriors rode around the barrow
Twelve of them in all, athelings’ sons.
They recited a dirge to declare their grief,
Spoke of the man, mourned their King.
They praised his manhood, and the prowess of his hands,
They raised his name; it is right a man
Should be lavish in honouring his lord and friend,
Should love him in his heart when the leading-forth
From the house of flesh befalls him at last.
This was the manner of the mourning of the men of the Geats,
Sharers in the feast, at the fall of their lord:
They said that he was of all the world’s kings
The gentlest of men, and the most gracious,
The kindest to his people, the keenest for fame.
Characters The Geats
The Geats were Beowulf's clan - a seafaring tribe residing in the south of Sweden. As the poem suggests, the Geats appear to have been conquered and disappeared into history. The seafaring Geats appear to be the invading Danes' of whom Gregory of Tours writes concerning an attack by Chlochilaicus (Hygelac) against the Franks in 520. Later they were connected to the Gautar people who were eventually subjugated by the Swedes in territory inland of Sweden.
Given this history, F.R. Klaeber speculates that Beowulf himself was born in about the year 495. He defeats Grendel and his mother to save HroSgar's kingdom in 515. Following Hygelac's raid in 520, he eventually becomes king of the Geats when Heardred was killed in 533. Fifty years after that, the poem says that Beowulf is killed by the dragon, but few scholars are willing to commit to any specific date.
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The Danes were residents of Denmark. HroSgar's Heorot is likely to have been located on the island of Sjaelland near the present day city of Roskilde.
Grendel was a monster, one of a giant race which survived the great flood, slain by Beowulf. It is told that his origins stretch back to Cain, who killed Abel. He is of particular cause of trouble to Hrothgar because of his disregard for law and custom: he refuses to negotiate a peace settlement or to accept tributes of gold.
Grendel's mother is supposedly a smaller creature than her son. She is a vengeful creature who illustrates the constant cycle of war in the poem, even when the enemy appears to be defeated.
As part of a mythical giant race, both Grendel and his mother appear impervious to normal swords, hence the difficulty the Danes must have had in trying to deal with them. Beowulf eventually finds a sword forged by the giants themselves in order to defeat them, but their blood runs hot enough to melt even that blade.
Paull F. Baum finds a "literary vacuum without historical perspective" when the authorship and purpose of the poem remains in question. In The Beowulf Poet he suggests that a single author had combined two folk stories with some historical events as a backdrop and some Christian doctrine to create a new form of heroic epic, or as Tolkien suggests, a "heroic-elegaic" poem. Baum even goes so far as to hypothesize an eighth-century female author of the poem as explanation for their pronounced roles, and for the lack of gory fighting (compared with the Finnsburh Fragment). The brief historical digressions and Christian colouring suggest an audience familiar with those ideas and events in the late eighth century. With the difficult language and sometimes obscure references, his conclusion is that the poem may have been a collection of folk lore and history, but intended for a small audience.
It seems clear that the origin of Beowulf stems from a mix of Scandinavian, Germanic, and Anglian influences. What is consistently unclear is which of these audiences the poem was intended for. As a story of Danes, Geats, and Swedes, one might suppose that the poem was of Scandinavian origin, finally written down in England.
