THE ANGLO-SAXON OR Old English literature

The British history is considered to begin in the 5^th century, when the country was invaded from the Continent be the warlike tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. At the very end of the 5^th century they settled in Britain and began to call themselves English.

The Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest form of English. It is difficult to give exact dates for the rise and development of a language, because it does not change suddenly; but perhaps it is true to say that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100.

The Life. The life of people at that time was a constant hardship, a perpetual struggle against savage nature and savage men. Behind them were gloomy forests inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men, and peopled in their imagination with dragons and evil shapes. In front of them, thundering at the very dikes for entrance, was the treacherous North Sea, with its fogs and storms and ice, but with that indefinable call of the deep that all men hear who live long beneath its influence. Here they lived, a big, blond, powerful race, and hunted and fought and sailed, and drank and feasted when their labor was done.

The Inner Life. A man's life is more than his work; his dream is ever greater than his achievement; and literature reflects not so much man's deed as the spirit which animates him; not the poor thing that he does, but rather the splendid thing that he ever hopes to do. In no place is this more evident than in the age we are now studying. Those early sea kings were a marvelous mixture of savagery and sentiment, of rough living and of deep feeling, of splendid courage and the deep melancholy of men who know their limitations and have faced the unanswered problem of death. They were not simply fearless freebooters who harried every coast in their war galleys. However, in all their fighting the love of an untarnished glory was uppermost; and under the warrior's savage exterior was hidden a great love of home and homely virtues, and a reverence for the one woman to whom he would presently return in triumph. So when the wolf hunt was over, or the desperate fight was won, these mighty men would gather in the banquet hall, and lay their weapons aside where the open fire would flash upon them, and there listen to the songs of Scop and Gleeman,-men who could put into adequate words the emotions and aspirations that all men feel but that only a few can ever express. It is this great and hidden life of the Anglo-Saxons that finds expression in all their literature. Briefly, it is summed up in five great principles,-their love of personal freedom, their responsiveness to nature, their religion, their reverence for womanhood, and their struggle for glory as a ruling motive in every noble life.

The main literary forms of the period were: lyric, riddle, epic and prose.

Heroic epics: “The song of Beowulf”, “The Battle of Brunanburgh”, “The Battle of Waldon”, “The Fight of Finnsburg”.

epic, the story in poetry of the adventures of a brave man (or men)

The greatest Old English poem is Beowulf, which belongs to the seventh century. It is a story of about 3,000 lines, and it is the first English epic. The name of its author is unknown.

Beowulf is not about England, but about Hrothgar, King of the Danes, and about a brave young man, Beowulf, from southern Sweden, who goes to help him. Hrothgar is in trouble. His great hall, called Heorot, is visited at night by a terrible creature, Grendel, which lives in a lake and comes to kill and eat Hrothgar’s men. One night Beowulf waits secretly for this thing, attacks it, and in a fierce fight pulls its arm off. It manages to reach the lake again, but dies there. Then its mother comes to the hall in search of revenge, and the attacks begin again. Beowulf follows her to the bottom of the lake and kills her there.

In later days Beowulf, now king of his people, has to defend his country against a fire-breathing creature. He kills the animal but is badly wounded in the fight, and dies. The poem ends with a sorrowful description of Beowulf s funeral fire. Here are a few lines of it, put into modern letters:

The sorrowing soldiers then laid the glorious prince, their dear lord, in the middle. Then on the hill the war-теп began to light the greatest of funeral fires. The wood-smoke rose black above the flames, the noisy fire, mixed with sorrowful cries.

The old language cannot be read now except by those who have made a special study of it. Among the critics who cannot read Old English there are some who are unkind to the poem, but Beowulf has its own value. It gives us an interesting picture of life in those old days. It tells us of fierce fights and brave deeds, of the speeches of the leader and the sufferings of his men. It describes their life in the hall, the terrible creatures that they had to fight, and their ships and travels. They had a hard life on land and sea. They did not enjoy it much, but they bore it well.

The few lines of Beowulf given above do not explain much about this kind of verse, and it may be well to say something about it. Each half-line has two main beats. There is no rhyme. Instead, each half-line is joined to the other by alliteration (alliteration, two or more words beginning with the same sound)

... Hie dygel lond

Warigeath, wulf-hleothu, windige næssas,

Frecne fen-gelad, thær fyrgen-stream

Under næssa genipu nither gewiteth,

Flod under foldan. Nis thæt feor heonon,

Mil-gemearces, thaet se mere standeth,

Ofer thæm hongiath hrinde bearwas

Things are described indirectly and in combinations of words. A ship is not only a ship: it is a sea-goer, a sea-boat, a sea-wood, or a wave-floater. A sailor is a sea-traveller, a seaman, a sea-soldier. Even the sea itself (sae) may be called the waves, or the sea-streams, or the ocean-way. Often several of these words are used at the same time. Therefore, if the poet wants to say that the ship sailed away, he may say that the ship, the sea-goer, the wave-floater, set out, started its journey and set forth over the sea, over the ocean- streams, over the waves. This changes a plain statement into something more colourful, but such descriptions take a lot of time, and the action moves slowly. In Old English poetry, descriptions of sad events or cruel situations are commoner and in better writing than those of happiness.

The Battle of Maldon. This battle was fought against the Danes in 991 and probably the poem was written soon after that. It has been highly praised for the words of courage which the leader uses:

hige sceal the heardra heorte the cenre

mod sceal the mare the ure maegen lytlath

her lith ure ealdor eall forheawen

god on greote a maeg gnornian

se the nu fram this wigplegan wendan thenceth.

The mind must be the firmer, the heart must be the braver, the courage must be the greater, as our strength grows less. Here lies our lord all cut to pieces, the good man on the ground. If anyone thinks now to turn away from this war-play, may he be unhappy for ever after.

The "Fight at Finnsburgh" is a fragment of fifty lines, discovered on the inside of a piece of parchment drawn over the wooden covers of a book of homilies. It is a magnificent war song, describing with Homeric power the defense of a hall by Hnæf with sixty warriors, against the attack of Finn and his army. At midnight, when Hnæf and his men are sleeping, they are surrounded by an army rushing in with fire and sword. Hnæf springs to his feet at the first alarm and wakens his warriors with a call to action that rings like a bugle blast. The fight lasts five days, but the fragment ends before we learn the outcome: The same fight is celebrated by Hrothgar's gleeman at the feast in Heorot, after the slaying of Grendel.

Old English lyrics include Deor’s Complaint, The Husband’s Message, The Wanderer and The Wife’s Complaint. Deor is a singer who has lost his lord’s favour. So he complains, but tries to comfort himself by remembering other sorrows of the world. Of each one he says ‘That passed over; this may do so also.’

The poem "Widsith," the wide goer or wanderer, is in part, at least, probably the oldest in our language. The author and the date of its composition are unknown; but the personal account of the minstrel's life belongs to the time before the Saxons first came to England. It expresses the wandering life of the gleeman, who goes forth into the world to abide here or there, according as he is rewarded for his singing.

The wonderful poem of "The Seafarer" seems to be in two distinct parts. The first shows the hardships of ocean life; but stronger than hardships is the subtle call of the sea. The second part is an allegory, in which the troubles of the seaman are symbols of the troubles of this life, and the call of the ocean is the call in the soul to be up and away to its true home with God. Whether the last was added by some monk who saw the allegorical possibilities of the first part, or whether some sea-loving Christian scop wrote both, is uncertain.

In general it is fairly safe to say that Old English prose came later than Old English verse; but there was some early prose. The oldest Laws were written at the beginning of the seventh century. Some of these are interesting. If you split a man’s ear, you had to pay 30 shillings. These Laws were not literature, and better sentences were written towards the end of the seventh century.

The most interesting piece of prose is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an early history of the country. There are, in fact, several chronicles, belonging to different cities. No doubt king Alfred (849-901) had a great influence on this work.

Life and Times of Alfred. For the history of Alfred's times, and details of the terrific struggle with the Northmen, the reader must be referred to the histories. The struggle ended with the Treaty of Wedmore, in 878, with the establishment of Alfred not only as king of Wessex, but as overlord of the whole northern country. Then the hero laid down his sword, and set himself as a little child to learn to read and write Latin, so that he might lead his people in peace as he had led them in war. It is then that Alfred began to be the heroic figure in literature that he had formerly been in the wars against the Northmen.

With the same patience and heroism that had marked the long struggle for freedom, Alfred set himself to the task of educating his people. First he gave them laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments and ending with the Golden Rule, and then established courts where laws could be faithfully administered. Safe from the Danes by land, he created a navy, almost the first of the English fleets, to drive them from the coast. Then, with peace and justice established within his borders, he sent to Europe for scholars and teachers, and set them over schools that he established. Hitherto all education had been in Latin; now he set himself the task, first, of teaching every free-born Englishman to read and write his own language, and second, of translating into English the best books for their instruction. Every poor scholar was honored at his court and was speedily set to work at teaching or translating; every wanderer bringing a book or a leaf of manuscript from the pillaged monasteries of Northumbria was sure of his reward. Alfred and his scholars treasured the rare fragments and copied them in the West-Saxon dialect. With the exception of Cædmon's Hymn, we have hardly a single leaf from the great literature of Northumbria in the dialect in which it was first written.

Works of Alfred. Aside from his educational work, Alfred is known chiefly as a translator. After fighting his country's battles, and at a time when most men were content with military honor, he began to learn Latin, that he might translate the works that would be most helpful to his people. His important translations are four in number: Orosius's Universal History and Geography, the leading work in general history for several centuries; Bede's History, the first great historical work written on English soil; Pope Gregory's Shepherds' Book, intended especially for the clergy; and Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, the favorite philosophical work of the Middle Ages.

The Saxon Chronicle. More important than any translation is the English or Saxon Chronicle. This was probably at first a dry record, especially of important births and deaths in the West-Saxon kingdom. Alfred enlarged this scant record, beginning the story with Cæsar's conquest. When it touches his own reign the dry chronicle becomes an interesting and connected story, the oldest history belonging to any modern nation in its own language. The record of Alfred's reign, probably by himself, is a splendid bit of writing and shows clearly his claim to a place in literature as well as in history. The Chronicle was continued after Alfred's death, and is the best monument of early English prose that is left to us. The Chronicle was continued for a century after the Norman Conquest, and is extremely valuable not only as a record of events but as a literary monument showing the development of our language.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1448