Old English written records

OLD ENGLISH POETRY

Old English poetry included long epic heroic poems, which drew on the

Bible as well as on pagan sources for their content. Some poetry was also based

on historical events. With a history of invasions and occupations, many writings

of this era are chronicles, annals, and historical records. Some are in the forms of

poetry and describe various battles, for example, "The Battle of Maldon" and

"The Battle of Brunanburh". The themes are war, conquest and bravery. Many

eighth-century works depict Anglo-Saxon resistance against the Vikings.

Lament and melancholy are frequently present in describing man's struggles

against his environment, life's difficulties, and the passage of time. Life is

fleeting. Often a prologue and epilogue express hope in God's compassion and

mercy. Examples of such poems include "The Wanderer", "The Seafarer" and

"The Ruin". Other poems depict the separation of a man and a woman and the

accompanying sadness, such as in "The Wife's Lament" and "The Husband's

Message". In these types of poem the man may have been exiled and sometimes

there is hope, sometimes not. Collectively, Old English poems that lament the

loss of worldly goods, glory, or human companionship are called elegies.

Beowulf is the best-known and best-preserved Old English verse. Caedmon

and Cynewulf were well-known Old English religious poets in the 7th and 9th

century respectively. Much Old English poetry is difficult to date and even

harder to assign to specific authors.

Old English written records

Our knowledge of the OE language comes mainly from manuscripts written in Latin characters. The first English words to be written down with the help of Latin characters were personal names and place names inserted in Latin texts; then came glosses and longer textual insertions. Among the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of OE poetry. Bede’s HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM (written in Latin in the 8th c.) contains and English fragment of five lines known as “Bede’s Death Song” and a religious poem of nine lines, “Cadmon’s Hymn”. It was translated into Kentish dialect. The greatest poem of that time was BEOWULF, an epic of the 7th or 8th c. It was originally composed in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect, but has come down to us in a 10th c. West Saxon copy. It is valued both as a source of linguistic material and as a work of art; it is the oldest poem in Germanic literature. BEOWULF is built up of several songs arranged in three chapters. It is based on old legends about the tribal life of the ancient Teutons. The author is unknown. Religious poems paraphrase, more or less closely, the books of the Bible – GENESIS, EXODUS (written by Cadmon, probably in Northumbrian dialect). CHRIST, FATE OF THE APOSTLES tell the life-stories of apostles and saints or deal with various subjects associated with the Gospels. OE poetry is characterized by a specific system of versification and some peculiar stylistic devices. Practically all of it is written in the OG alliterative verse: the lines are not rhymed and the number of stressed syllables being fixed. The style of OE poetry is marked by the wide use of metaphorical phrases or compounds describing the qualities or functions of the thing. OE prose is a most valuable source of information for the history of the language. The earliest samples of continuous prose are the first pages of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES. It was written in West Saxon dialect. By the 10th c. the West Saxon dialect had firmly established itself as the written form of English.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 925