第3章 The Anglo-Saxon Period

(mid-5th c.-1066)

Chapter 1 The Early Invasions of the British Isles

The British Isles have experienced a long history of migration from across Europe.The ancient migrations have mainly come via two routes:along the Atlantic coast and from Germany-Scandinavia.The main settlement came in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods.But the arrival in Britain of cultural traits identified as Celtic is usually considered to be from about the 6th century BC.The Celts were probably the first inhabitants of the British Isles in recorded history.One of their tribes,the Britons,came over in the 5th century BC and stayed for some five hundred years.From the Britons the island got its name "Britain," which means "the land of the Britons." The Celts,those powerfully built and fair-haired people,were tenacious and loved war.They left behind a rich oral tradition of myths and legends,of which the Arthurian legends are an important part.In 55 BC,Celtic Britain was in turn invaded by the Romans under Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC).The Roman soldiers came to stay for five centuries and transplanted their civilization to the land.Britain was a province of the Roman Empire from 43 to 410 AD.

As the Roman Empire declined at the beginning of the 5th century,its hold on Britain loosened.By 410 AD,Roman forces had been withdrawn,and small,isolated bands of migrating Germans began to invade Britain.There seems to have been no large invasion with a combined army or fleet,but the Germanic tribes named Teutons (mainly including Anglos,Saxons and Jutes) quickly established control over modern-day England and settled down there in around 450 AD.The cultural heritage of the Celts and the Romans was therefore destroyed by the invading Anglo-Saxons.Those,now called the "Anglo-Saxons," largely came from Scandinavia and northern Germany,first landing in Eastern Britain.They drove the Celts to the north and the west,and slowly developed their own language (Anglo-Saxon) and culture.Anglo-Saxon became Old English,and the place they occupied became England,which was derived from the word "Angle-land" meaning "the land of the Angles." Thus began the Anglo-Saxon period in English history.

The period was generally one of wars between the petty kingdoms in the land.Of the seven main kingdoms Mercia and then Northumberland in the north flourished particularly in wealth and culture in the 7th and 8th centuries,while Wessex in the south became a more important center of military and political power and assumed supremacy in culture and learning in the 9th and 10th centuries.Beginning from the late 8th century the Danes came to invade England and for more than a century they made intermittent raids on the eastern coast of Britain and occupied for fairly long periods of time large areas of northeastern England.In the late 9th century King Alfred the Great of the Kingdom of Wessex successfully led the English people in a protracted war against the invading Danes.The invaders were repulsed and gradually all the kingdoms in England were united into one.It was King Alfred the Great who decided that literature should be written in the vernacular,or Old English.

In the early 11th century the Danes again came to invade England and under Canute (c.995-1035) they conquered and ruled over all England for a quarter of a century (1017-1042).Then,following the expulsion of the Danes the Normans from Normandy in northern France came to invade England in 1066,and under the leadership of William the Conqueror (c.1028-1087),Duke of Normandy,who claimed the succession to the English throne,they succeeded in defeating the English troops and conquering the whole of England.The Norman Conquest marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo-Saxons were heathen upon their first arrival in England.In 597 AD the first missionaries led by St.Augustine (first third of the 6th century-604) came to England from Rome and within a century all England was Christianized.Churches were built and the heathen mythology was gradually replaced by the Christian religion.The coming of Christianity meant not simply a new life and leader for England;it also meant the wealth of a new language (i.e.,Latin).The scops were now replaced by the literary monks,who were among the most learned in the country.The monks had behind them all the culture and literary resources of the Latin language.The effect was seen instantly in the early English prose and poetry.However,the heathen concepts of nature and the supernatural persisted for a considerable period of time and were often curiously mixed with Christian views and expressions.This phenomenon also found its expressions frequently in the literary works of the Anglo-Saxon period.

Chapter 2 Anglo-Saxon Literature

The Anglo-Saxon period was basically barren in literary creations.What have been left through the ravages of time are mostly fragments.The Anglo-Saxon literature is almost exclusively a verse literature in oral form.It was passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation and was not given a written form until long after its composition.Its creators are,for the most part,unknown.

2.1 Poetry

The poetry of this period falls into two groups-the pagan/secular poetry like The Song of Beowulf and the Christian/religious poetry.The former refers to the poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them in the form of oral sagas-the crude material out of which literature was slowly developed on the English soil.The latter contains the poetry which,chiefly based on the Biblical stories,dealt with Christian teachings,themes or references.Caedmon and Cynewulf were among the great religious poets.Caedmon,living in the latter half of the 7th century,was the first known religious poet of England and is accepted as the "father of English song." Some of his poems survive in a Wessex dialect.These include the paraphrases of Genesis,Exodus,Daniel and Judith,and a poem about Christ and Satan as well.He was a transitional poet from the pagan to the religious way of writing and was at his best writing about fighting,seafaring,and passions of strong men.Cynewulf,living a century later,was the first poet ever to sign his compositions.He knew Latin and religious literature.He was famous for his poetical works like Christ,Juliana,The Fates of the Appostles and Elene,among which the first one,happy in mood and alive with the poet's creative talent,consists of three parts-the Virgin Birth,the Ascension of Christ and the Day of Judgment.Except the unknown composer of Beowulf,he is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon poet.

The Song of Beowulf,England's national epic,is an Old English poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative long lines.It is probably the oldest surviving epic in the English language and is commonly cited as the greatest work of the Anglo-Saxon literature.The story was possibly brought over to England at the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest,and was handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation until it was anonymously recorded in Anglo-Saxon/Old English,in the 8th century.The full poem survives in the manuscript dated the 10th century and known as the Nowell Codex,which is currently located in the British Library.It has no title in the original manuscript,but has become known by the name of the protagonist.The poem tells the story of Beowulf,a 6th-century hero of the Geats.The story takes place in Scandinavia,and there is no mention of England at all.It is basically a two-part narrative-Beowulf's fight with the sea-monsters(Grendel and his mother) in the first part,and his killing a fiery dragon and his death in the second-with an interpolation between.

The first part centers on Beowulf's deeds in Denmark.Hrothgar,the present king of the Danes,is in great trouble.His great hall Heorot has been for twelve years harassed by a sea-monster Grendel,who comes to grab and devour the king's people as he pleases,and no one seems to be his match.The king of Sweden sends over his nephew Beowulf with some retainers to help out.After a feast of welcome,at nightfall Beowulf and his men wait in the hall for the monster to show up.As is expected,Grendel appears.He seizes and devours one of Beowulf's men.His next target is Beowulf.Beowulf,who has the strength of 30 men in his grip,grapples with him single-handed as the monster is vulnerable to no weapons of steel,tears off one of his arms,and sends him howling away to his death in his haunted pool.The overjoyed king celebrates the victory,but little expects that a greater danger is to appear and play havoc with his peace.That very night Grendel's mother,furious over her son's death,storms in to avenge him and kills several of the king's retainers.Beowulf follows her to her lair,dives in,fights with the she-monster,almost loses to her,but manages to kill her in the end with the help of a magic sword.He returns to the great hall with the heads of the two monsters and receives gifts from the grateful king at another celebration.

In the second part of the poem,Beowulf goes back to Geatland in Sweden,and succeeds his uncle and his cousin as king of the Geats and rules the country well for half a century.The last adventure he has in his old age is his fight with a fiery dragon.One day,the fire-spitting monster comes and threatens to devastate the country.Beowulf goes with a servant to kill it,which he does,but not before he is fatally wounded.He dies for his people as an ideal king.After his death,his attendants bury him in a tumulus,a burial mound,in Geatland.The poem ends with his funeral.

In theme,Beowulf has little new to offer as another adventure story about a hero killing monsters to make the world safe for people,but the story is unique as a hybrid of fact with legend.It also serves to add testimony to a universal tradition that humans always manage to get a sense of control over life with the help of their imaginative powers.What's more,the epic is essentially pagan in spirit and matter,and has a great social significance.It presents readers an all-round picture of the tribal society and faithfully records the social conditions and customs of the time.

In terms of poetical form,the epic is characterized first by the use of alliteration.The use of the strong stress and the predominance of consonants are very notable here.A line,containing an indefinite number of words or syllables,generally has four stresses,with a pause,between the second and the third stresses,breaking the line into two parts.Alliteration invariably falls upon the stressed syllables,but not all four of the stresses in a line alliterate,and usually two or three of them do,with at least one from each half-line.Another peculiar feature is the frequent use of compound-words to serve as indirect metaphors that are sometimes picturesque.For instance,"treasure-keepers" refer to chieftains;the "whale-path," the "swan-road" and the "seal-bath" are used to refer to the sea;the "shield-bearer," the "battle-hero" and the "spear-fighter" are used as substitutes for the soldier.In addition,the use of understatements such as "not troublesome" for very welcome and "need not praise" for a right to condemn gives an impression of reserve and at time a tinge of ironical humor.

2.2 Prose

In the 8th century,Anglo-Saxon prose appeared.The famous prose writers of that period were Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great.Venerable Bede (672/673-735),also referred to as Saint Bede,was the first scholar in English literature and has been regarded as the Father of English learning.He was also the man who first described Caedman's legendary life story.His works,over forty in number,written exclusively in Latin,cover the whole field of human knowledge of his day.The most important of his works is The Ecclesiastical History of England,which gained him the title the "Father of English History." Bede wrote scientific,historical and theological works,featuring the range of his writings from music and metrics to exegetical Scripture commentaries.His Latin is generally clear,but his Biblical commentaries are more technical.They employ the allegorical method of interpretation and his history includes accounts of miracles,which to modern historians has seemed at odds with his critical approach to the materials in his history.Although Bede is mainly studied as a historian now,in his time his works on grammar,chronology and biblical studies were as important as his historical works.The non-historical works contributed greatly to the Carolingian renaissance.

Alfred the Great (849-899) was king of Wessex kingdom from 871 to 899.He successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest,and by the time of his death he had become the dominant ruler in England.He was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons" and is the only English monarch to be accorded the epithet "the Great." Alfred had a reputation as a learned and merciful man of a gracious and level-headed nature.He encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system,military structure and his people's quality of life.Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm,Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English,with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.He tried every means to improve the state of education.He was a well-known translator and translated some important Latin works into English.His most important work is Anglo-Saxon Chronicles,which is regarded as the best monument of the Old English prose.

Exercises

I.Multiple choices

1._____were probably the first inhabitants of the British Isles in recorded history.

A.Anglo-Saxons B.Jutes

C.Teutons D.Celts

2.The cultural heritage of the Celts and the Romans was destroyed by the invading_____in the 5th century.

A.Anglo-Saxons B.Normans

C.Britons D.Greeks

3.It was King Alfred the Great who decided that literature should be written in the vernacular or_____.

A.Modern English B.Old English

C.Middle English D.London Dialect

4.In 597 A.D.the first missionaries led by St.Augustine came to England from Rome and within a century all England was_____.

A.destroyed B.united

C.Christianized D.divided

5.The Anglo-Saxon literature is almost exclusively a verse literature in_____form.

A.oral B.written

C.religious D.pagan

6._____is the first known religious poet of England and accepted as the "father of English song."

A.Alfred the Great B.Cynewulf

C.Venerable Bede D.Caedmon

7.Except the unknown composer of The Song of Beowulf,_____is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon poet.

A.Alfred the Great B.Cynewulf

C.Venerable Bede D.Caedmon

Ⅱ.Blank-filling

1._____was a well-known translator and translated some important Latin works into English.His most important work is Anglo-Saxon Chronicles,which is regarded as the best monument of the Old English prose.

2.The "_____" marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.

3.The Old English poetry can be divided into two groups:the pagan/secular poetry and the_____poetry.

4._____,England's national epic,is the oldest poem in the English language and the most important specimen of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Ⅲ.Term definition

1.Alliteration 2.Assonance

3.Consonance 4.Prose

5.Understatement 6.Metaphor

7.Epic 8.Motif

9.Theme

Ⅳ.Essay questions

Give a comprehensive introduction to The Song of Beowulf .