Old English poetry is characterised by:

Alliterative accentual verse with a caesura

End rhyme and iambic pentameter

Syllable counting and terza rima

English Literature Quiz

The Old English Period (Anglo-Saxon Literature, 449 to 1066)

The Old English or Anglo-Saxon period runs conventionally from the Germanic settlement of Britain in about 449 to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Its literature survives in only four major poetic manuscripts and a body of prose, and it is dominated by heroic verse, elegy, religious poetry and the prose of King Alfred and Aelfric. These notes cover the historical background, the language and metrical technique of Old English verse, the manuscripts, Beowulf, the elegies and religious poems, Caedmon and Cynewulf, the prose tradition and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the standard critical vocabulary. A 20-question practice set follows.

Historical and Linguistic Background

Three Germanic peoples, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, began settling in Britain in about 449, according to Bede. Their dialects became Old English, a heavily inflected West Germanic language quite unlike Modern English in vocabulary and grammar. Christianity arrived with the mission of St Augustine of Canterbury in 597, and the conversion determined the shape of the literature, since almost all surviving texts were copied by monastic scribes.

Four main dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon. West Saxon became the standard literary dialect under King Alfred, and most surviving manuscripts are in it.
Viking raids began with the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and led to the establishment of the Danelaw; King Alfred the Great of Wessex (reigned 871 to 899) checked the Danes and revived learning.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 ends the period, after which French and Latin displaced English as the language of government and high culture.
Old English poetry is oral-formulaic in origin, composed and performed by a scop, the tribal poet who preserved and celebrated the deeds of the people.
Central social values in the verse: comitatus, the bond of mutual loyalty between a lord and his retainers; wergild, the man-price paid in compensation for a killing; and wyrd, fate or destiny.
The tone of the poetry is characteristically grave, elegiac and stoical, with a sense of transience captured in the recurring ubi sunt motif, meaning where are they now.

Verse Technique and the Four Manuscripts

Old English poetry does not rhyme and does not count syllables. Each line is built of two half-lines separated by a caesura, bound together by alliteration, with two stressed syllables in each half-line. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line normally sets the alliterating sound.

Alliterative accentual verse: four stresses to the line, a medial caesura, and alliteration linking the half-lines. Rhyme is essentially absent, apart from the curiosity of The Rhyming Poem.
Kenning: a compressed metaphorical compound used in place of a plain noun, such as whale-road or swan-road for the sea, ring-giver for a king, battle-light for a sword and bone-house for the body.
Litotes: deliberate understatement for emphasis, extremely common in Old English verse.
Variation or apposition: restating the same idea in successive phrases, the characteristic ornament of the style.
Almost all surviving Old English poetry is preserved in four manuscripts, all written around the year 1000: the Beowulf Manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv), the Exeter Book, the Junius Manuscript (also called the Caedmon Manuscript) and the Vercelli Book.
The Exeter Book contains The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, Deor, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, Widsith, Christ and about 95 riddles.
The Vercelli Book, discovered in northern Italy, contains The Dream of the Rood, Andreas, Elene and The Fates of the Apostles.
The Junius Manuscript contains the biblical paraphrases Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan, once attributed wholesale to Caedmon.
The Beowulf Manuscript also contains Judith and prose pieces including the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle. It was damaged in the Cotton library fire of 1731.

Beowulf and the Heroic and Elegiac Verse

Beowulf is the first great poem in English and the longest surviving Old English poem, at 3182 lines. It is anonymous, of uncertain date, and survives in a single manuscript. Although composed in England and Christian in its narrating voice, it is set entirely in Scandinavia, among the Danes and the Geats, and preserves a pagan Germanic heroic world.

Beowulf structure: the hero, a Geat, sails to Denmark and kills the monster Grendel in Heorot, the hall of King Hrothgar; he then kills Grendel's mother in her underwater lair; fifty years later, as king of the Geats, he fights a dragon, kills it with the help of Wiglaf alone, and dies of his wound.
Key names to remember: Hrothgar, Heorot, Grendel, Grendel's mother, Unferth, Wealhtheow, Wiglaf, Hygelac, Hrunting and Naegling (swords). Grendel is described as a descendant of Cain.
J R R Tolkien's lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936) transformed criticism by arguing that the poem should be read as a poem about monsters and mortality, not merely as a historical document.
Other heroic poems: The Battle of Maldon, on the defeat of Byrhtnoth by Viking raiders in 991, famous for Byrhtwold's speech that the mind must be the firmer as strength grows less; The Battle of Brunanburh, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and the fragmentary Finnsburh Fragment and Waldere.
The elegies are short first-person laments on exile, loss and transience: The Wanderer, spoken by a retainer who has lost his lord; The Seafarer, on the hardship of the sea and the longing for a heavenly home; The Ruin, on a decayed Roman city, probably Bath; Deor, on the sorrows of the poet Deor with its refrain that all that passed away, so may this; and The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, both spoken by women, which is unusual in the corpus.
Widsith is the earliest of the personal poems, a catalogue of the tribes and rulers visited by a wandering scop.

Religious Poetry and Old English Prose

Christian poetry in Old English begins with Caedmon, an illiterate cowherd at Whitby who, according to Bede, received the gift of song in a dream. Only his nine-line Hymn survives. The other named poet is Cynewulf, who signed four poems in runic letters. Prose developed later than verse and reached its height under King Alfred and then Aelfric.

Caedmon's Hymn, from about 670, is the earliest recorded Old English poem and the earliest datable poem in English. The story is told in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
Cynewulf signed Juliana, Elene, Christ II (The Ascension) and The Fates of the Apostles with runes spelling his name.
The Dream of the Rood, in the Vercelli Book, is the finest Old English religious poem. It is a dream vision in which the Cross itself speaks and describes the Crucifixion, presenting Christ as a young heroic warrior who mounts the cross willingly. Lines of it are carved on the eighth-century Ruthwell Cross.
Judith, in the Beowulf manuscript, retells the Apocryphal story of Judith beheading Holofernes in heroic Germanic terms.
King Alfred the Great (871 to 899) is called the father of English prose. He led the translation into English of Gregory's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Orosius's History against the Pagans, St Augustine's Soliloquies and Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and he initiated the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun in about 891 under Alfred, is the first continuous history in English, kept in several versions at different monasteries, with the Peterborough Chronicle continuing to 1154.
Aelfric (about 955 to 1010), abbot of Eynsham, wrote the Catholic Homilies, the Lives of the Saints and a Latin Grammar, and developed a rhythmical, alliterative prose. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, wrote the fierce Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, the Sermon of the Wolf to the English, in about 1014.
Bede (about 673 to 735), the Venerable Bede, wrote in Latin; his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, completed in 731, is the main historical source for the period and earned him the title father of English history.

Key Terms

Kenning: A condensed metaphorical compound substituted for an ordinary noun in Old English and Old Norse verse, such as whale-road for the sea or ring-giver for a king.
Comitatus: The Germanic bond of reciprocal loyalty by which a lord gives treasure and protection and his retainers give service and, if necessary, their lives.
Caesura: The pause dividing each Old English line into two half-lines, which are joined by alliteration rather than rhyme.
Ubi sunt: The where are they now motif of lament for a vanished past, used memorably in The Wanderer.

Practice Quiz — 20 Questions

correct out of 20

The Old English period is conventionally dated from:
- A.410 to 1066
- B.449 to 1066
- C.597 to 1100
- D.793 to 1154
B. 449 to 1066 — The period runs from the traditional date of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in 449 to the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Old English poetry is characterised by:
- A.End rhyme and iambic pentameter
- B.Alliterative accentual verse with a caesura
- C.Syllable counting and terza rima
- D.Blank verse
B. Alliterative accentual verse with a caesura — Each line has four stresses divided by a medial caesura, with alliteration binding the two half-lines.
The expression whale-road for the sea is an example of a:
- A.Kenning
- B.Litotes
- C.Caesura
- D.Refrain
A. Kenning — A kenning is a compressed metaphorical compound used in place of a plain noun.
Beowulf survives in how many manuscripts?
- A.One
- B.Two
- C.Four
- D.Nine
A. One — It exists only in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, which was damaged in the Cotton library fire of 1731.
Beowulf is set in:
- A.England
- B.Scandinavia
- C.Ireland
- D.Normandy
B. Scandinavia — The action takes place among the Danes and the Geats, although the poem was composed in England.
The hall of King Hrothgar in Beowulf is called:
- A.Heorot
- B.Hrunting
- C.Naegling
- D.Finnsburh
A. Heorot — Heorot is the great mead-hall attacked nightly by Grendel.
Grendel is described in the poem as a descendant of:
- A.Abel
- B.Cain
- C.Adam
- D.Noah
B. Cain — The poet places Grendel in the accursed line of Cain, linking Germanic monster and biblical evil.
Which retainer alone stands by Beowulf in the dragon fight?
- A.Unferth
- B.Wiglaf
- C.Hygelac
- D.Byrhtnoth
B. Wiglaf — Wiglaf is the only one of the twelve companions who does not flee, and he inherits the leadership.
The 1936 lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics was delivered by:
- A.J R R Tolkien
- B.F R Leavis
- C.T S Eliot
- D.C S Lewis
A. J R R Tolkien — Tolkien argued the poem should be judged as poetry about mortality rather than mined as history.
Which manuscript contains The Wanderer, The Seafarer and the Old English riddles?
- A.The Vercelli Book
- B.The Exeter Book
- C.The Junius Manuscript
- D.The Beowulf Manuscript
B. The Exeter Book — The Exeter Book is the largest collection of Old English poetry and holds the elegies and about 95 riddles.
The Dream of the Rood is preserved in:
- A.The Exeter Book
- B.The Vercelli Book
- C.The Junius Manuscript
- D.The Peterborough Chronicle
B. The Vercelli Book — It appears in the Vercelli Book, and portions are carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross.
In The Dream of the Rood the speaker of the central narrative is:
- A.Christ
- B.The Cross
- C.The Virgin Mary
- D.An angel
B. The Cross — The Cross itself recounts the Crucifixion, presenting Christ as a young warrior who ascends it willingly.
The earliest recorded Old English poem is:
- A.Widsith
- B.Deor
- C.Caedmon's Hymn
- D.The Ruin
C. Caedmon's Hymn — Caedmon's Hymn, from about 670, is preserved through Bede's account of the cowherd who received the gift of song.
Which poet signed his poems in runic letters?
- A.Caedmon
- B.Cynewulf
- C.Aelfric
- D.Wulfstan
B. Cynewulf — Cynewulf embedded his name in runes in Juliana, Elene, Christ II and The Fates of the Apostles.
The Old English poem with a refrain saying that all that passed away, so may this, is:
- A.Deor
- B.The Ruin
- C.Widsith
- D.The Seafarer
A. Deor — Deor is unusual among Old English poems in being divided into stanzas by a repeated refrain.
The Battle of Maldon commemorates a battle fought in:
- A.937
- B.991
- C.1014
- D.1066
B. 991 — The poem describes the defeat and death of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth at the hands of Viking raiders in 991.
The king who is called the father of English prose is:
- A.Athelstan
- B.Alfred the Great
- C.Edward the Confessor
- D.Canute
B. Alfred the Great — Alfred led a programme of translation from Latin into English and initiated the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun in about:
- A.731
- B.891
- C.1014
- D.1154
B. 891 — It was started under Alfred in about 891 and the Peterborough version continues as late as 1154.
The Sermo Lupi ad Anglos was written by:
- A.Aelfric
- B.Wulfstan
- C.Bede
- D.Cynewulf
B. Wulfstan — Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, wrote this denunciation of English moral failure during the Danish attacks of about 1014.
Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum was completed in 731 and written in:
- A.Old English
- B.Latin
- C.Old Norse
- D.Anglo-Norman French
B. Latin — Bede wrote in Latin; the work was later translated into Old English during Alfred's programme.

References

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A, The Middle Ages — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393603026
British Library, Beowulf manuscript, Cotton MS Vitellius A XV — https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beowulf
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Project Gutenberg — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38326
Exeter Cathedral, The Exeter Book — https://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/history-heritage/exeter-book/
Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-short-oxford-history-of-english-literature-9780199263387