OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
Ferdi Ferit MALGARALI*
ÖZET
Bu çalışmanın amacı, eski İngiliz Edebiyatı ve Beowulf,
Seafarer, gibi ilk örneklerinin üzerinde durup, eski İngiliz
Edebiyatı’nın tür, anlatım biçimi, ve içerik bakımından genel
özellikleri hakkında bilgi vermektir.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is dealing with Old English
Literature and its earliest examples such as; Beowulf, Seafarer,
and giving information about general characteristics of Old
English Literature in the point of view of expression manner,genre and content.
KEY WORDS
Old English, Anglo-Saxon, Beowulf, Epic, Chiristianity,
German
Alphabet,
Battle
of
Maldon,
The
Seafarer,
Scandinavian, Riddle, Bede, Ecclestical History, Genesis,
Caedmon, Cynewulf
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, there are many reasons, but perhaps it is true to say that old English was
spoken from A.D. 600 to about 1100
Not only Old English words and grammar rules but also, Old English letters comes from
German alphabet differs from Latin. Even Englishman who is educated in the best university
he can not read easily the earliest texts. Therefore, according to literary men emphasize that
Old English period is just a prologue for English literature.
*
Kafkas Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültes,i İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı ,3.Sınıf Öğrencisi, Kars, 2004-2005
After the Roman conquers left Britain in the fifth century, Anglo-Saxon invaders took
over control of most of the country. Late in the sixth century there was a spiritual invasion by
Christian missioners sent by Pope. Anglo-Saxson rule continued over a land compounded of a
strange mixture of pagan and Christian culture until the invasion and conquest by the
Normans from continued Europe in1066.
In Anglo-Saxon in England, life was primitive, in secure, and uncertain. There was no
nation in the modern sense, but only a multitude of wealth, independent lords and kings,
frequently in armed conflict with each other courage, strength and loyalty to the lord were the
highest virtues.
Anglo-Saxon established southwest and east. They established a kind of culture which is
called English culture. They named the country as England. This people who came from
Scandinavian were called as Barbarian. The reason behind they were pagan, a person who
does not believe in any religion
The Anglo-Saxon and, along with them, the Jutes were barbarians perhaps only in the
sense that they were not Christians. The Roman Empire had ended as a Christian Empire and
Christianity had been well –established as the religion of Britain. But the Angles and Saxons
worshipped the old Germanic gods who still give their name to the days of the week- Thor
and Woden and the rest. Yet they had some civilization. They were farmers and seaman, they
knew something of law and the art of government and it seems that they brought a literature
with them from Europe to England, as the country must now be called. They established a
kind of culture that is English culture.
English literature had its beginning while the Anglo-Saxons were still on the
Continent. When they conquered the Celts, they brought with them a rich tradition of oral
literature steeped in their customs and pagan beliefs and rituals. This literature focused on the
telling of the brave and heroic deeds of the warriors possessing attributes they valued and
wished emulate. The only surviving full-length epic in old English is Beowulf. The influence
of the epics was sustained throughout the Anglo-Saxon period
Beowulf is an epic; it contains historical events, sometimes heroic deeds, actions or
hardship in life. Epic is also along narrative poem or a play. It is a along narrative poem
presented in an elevated style, relating heroic deeds of noble or heroic character or semi
divine personages and supernatural and natural objects. Like other traditional or folk epics, for
example, the Iliad and Odyssey Beowulf originated in traditional tales or legends dating back
to a remote past and handed down orally by generations of bards or singers. Certain features
are associated with the epic. The characters are of noble birth, or they are supernatural beings
from past. The author usually announces his theme at the opening and calls on the muses to
help him in his task of narration. The style is noble and majestic; the characters speak
ceremoniously in long set speeches
The oldest poem in English Language is Beowulf. It was found towards the end of
eighteenth century it is now exhibited in British Museum Beowulf which belongs to the
seventh century. It is a story of about 3000 lines, and it is the first and most important English
epic. The name of author is unknown
It was registered towards the end tenth century. In Beowulf explains the events which
took place in the seventh century Beowulf is not composed in England, but on the continent of
Europe. It is considered the pioneer of English literature. Beowulf is a partly regarded as a
secular poem. In Beowulf pagan and religious elements are into each other. In the story
mystic ceremonies, ship burial takes place
Beowulf composed during the eighth century, has its origins in the traditions of the
German tribes from among who came some of the English. The poet begins in a customary
way, by tracing tribal history from the reign of the first great king of the Danes, Scyld
Scefing.
Beowulf is essentially a warrior’s story. It tells of the hero who gives his name to the
poem and his struggle with a foul monster-half devil, half-man called Grendel.
The story is divided into two parts; in the first part, Danish King, Hyrothgar,
builds a magnicifant palace where he entertains with his warrior, families and his friends. But
one day suddenly a man-eating monster called Grendel starts visiting this palace. Throughout
twelve years, all comings he kills and eats the kings warriors by one by, thirty person.
Beowulf is described great-frame or great-heart, hears the circumstance of Danish King and
decides to save him from Grendel. He goes to there with his fourteen friends. An old
sorrowful man Hyrothgar welcomes him. Beowulf with his friends sleeps at night. Grendel
comes but Beowulf catches his arms and it is the vain escaping Grendel. Beowulf kills the
Grendel. King preparers an excellent feast for him and gives jewels to him. The mother of
Grendel who lives under water comes to take his revenge. He decides to kill her too. He finds
the cave where she lives. He describes this place in the poem. In the poem there is much
darkness, mystical, gloomy natural objects. He kills the mother of Grendel. He comes to back
Denmark, and gets many presents, feasts. He becomes the king of his country for a long time.
After fifty years, the peace is spoiled by the threat of a dragon, but he decides to fight with
dragon although he is too old. He is wounded seriously. He is put on fire. His ashes buried
with the treasure of dragon.
The sorrowing soldiers then laid the glorious prince, their dear lord, in the middle. Then
on the hill the war-men began to light the greatest of funeral fires. The wood-smoke rose
black above the flames, the noisy fire, mixed sorrowful cries.
Much of the strength and violence of Beowulf derive from the nature of Old English
itself.
Beowulf gives us an interesting picture of life in old days with many excellent words but
since it was written an Old English many people can not understand. The Beowulf poet, like
other Old English poets, made use of the poetic conventions expected and understood by his
audience. These convections expected and understood by his audience. These convections
included a special poetic vocabulary, fixed expressions or formula-phrases, and poetic
compounds.
If we come to conclusion, Beowulf has a various details. It gives some knowledge to
reader about Scandinavian tribes before setting in England how they live, what kind of
religion they have. Of course Beowulf is not considered as Iliad. The style of the poem is
primitive and it is full of heroism even when Beowulf is getting too old he does not escape
fighting
If we summarize Beowulf is a heroic poem. Hero fights against supernatural creatures.
He idealizes the national sprit and the story represents the feature of pagan society. The poem
is full of imaginary so we can say that it is a kind of imaginative literature. In the poem king
gives a party in his palace it represents aristocratic culture.
The narrative structure is constructed around three events. The activities before Beowulf
come to the palace. Second; fighting, celebrations for him and peace. Third, Beowulf returns
to his own country and he comes to the throne and governs his country for along time.
All the records of the early literature of Anglo-Saxons belonged to a Christian England,
written by clerks in monasteries, kept stored in monasteries, and only coming to light at the
time of Reformation, when Henry eight dissolved the monasteries. This literature is almost
exclusively a verse literature. There is a prose, but this is not strictly literature-history,
theology, letters, biography- and the names of the writers of much of this prose are known.
There is a lot of anonymous poetry in the world, but very little anonymous prose.
Until the end of sixth century, the Anglo-Saxon worshipped various pagan gods-gods
associated today with Nose mythology. Christianity did not have much impact on pagan
society until a missionary named Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to convert
King Ethelbert of Kent in 597. Within one or two generations Christianity had spread
throughout England.
After the sixth century Anglo-Saxon people started to conversion to Christianity because
of missionary activities. Eventually Christianity influenced Anglo-Saxon literature. The
heroic poetry was mixed with religious elements. The pagan characteristics in literature
gradually disappeared. Christianity enabled Anglo-Saxon to make with Roman culture and
classical Greek literature.
Along with a new religion, the Christian missionaries brought education and culture.
Schools grew up as monasteries were built. Young Anglo-Saxon learned not only the
Scriptures but also the writing of the Roman Virgil and of the ancient Greeks. The coming of
Christianity had a marked influence on literature, as the monks in the monasteries recorded
the poetry that had been passed down orally from generation by the mead-hall entertainers.
In spite of the widespread effects of Christianity on the Anglo-Saxons, they clung tightly
too many of the superstitions and customs from their pagan past.
There is a good deal of Old English verse, some dealing with war, like The Battle of
Maldon, whose heroic note still rings over the centuries :
Thought shall be braver, the heart bolder,
Mightier the mood, as our might lessens.
In Old English literature there are also many war poems such as Fight at Finsburg or
Waldhere but they are not as good as Battle of Maldon.
There is a larger body of verse on Christian themes, sometimes beautiful, but generally
duller than the pagan, warrior poems. There are two great poems- The Seafarer and the
Wanderer-whose resigned melancholy (the laments of men without fixed abode) and powerful
description of nature still speak strongly through the strange words and the heavy-footed
rhythms. Resigned melancholy is a characteristic of much Old English verse: even when a
poem is at its most vigorous-dealing with war, storm, sea, the drinking-hall, the creation of the
world-we always seem to be aware of certain undercurrent of sadness. The sense of
melancholy is there all the time, part of the strange haunting music of Old English poetry.
The Wanderer consists of a monologue spoken by a character whose fate it is to roam
the seas in search of a lord to replace his dead gold-friend. The speaker acquires wisdom
through his grim wanderings. This bleak monologue is flanked by two moralizing passages. It
has been suggested that the monk who wrote down the poem might have been trying to make
its essentially pagan sprit more acceptable to Christian audience by adding these expressions
of faith in God to the poem.
We have 100 lines of Seafarer but it is possible that it is longer than it. Since it is not
known beginning and ending of poetry we do not know why the poem is dominant religious
elements at the end of poem. Moreover it is not certain who seafarer is? An old man or it is a
monologue or it is a dialogue?
The Seafarer deals with the contrast between settled lives an earth hardship danger at the
sea. It is with melancholic tone. The narrator tells the sorrow he faced in the cooled waves at
the sea. His experience at the sea frightens him, so he isolates himself from activities of life.
But the poem moves towards another aspect of life in which he gets pleasure in the security of
the life on shore. For the poet the cuckoo as being harbinger of summer reminds him of the
seasons while the cry of seabird urges a return to dangers of the sea
Beginning in the eighth century, Old English was further modified by contact with
Scandinavian languages. The inhabitants of Scandinavian peninsula and Denmark, once close
neighbors of the early Anglo-Saxons and similar to them both in blood and in language, began
a series of raids on England which culminated in the eleventh century when Cunt, king of
Denmark, conquered all of England and seized the English throne. For the next twenty-five
years, Danish kings ruled England.
During the nearly three hundred years of Scandinavian attacks, a considerable number
of Scandinavians also settled peacefully in England, especially in the northern and eastern
sections. Evidence of the extent of such settlement survives in place names. A map today
shows more than six hundred names such as Grimsby, Rugby, and Derby formed from the
Danish word byr meaning farm or town. There are also names like Thistlethwaite and
Braithwaite from their meaning isolated piece of land.
Since old English and the language of the invaders were quite similar, there was a ready
intermingling of forms of speech. In some cases, when the languages had different words to
describe the same thing, the English word survived. In other cases, such Scandinavian words
as egg and systir (sister) replaced their old English equivalents. The Scandinavian pronouns
they, their, and them were substituted for the Old English equivalents hie, hiera, and him.
Occasionally, Old English words which had fallen into disuse were revived because of
Scandinavian parallels.
Two other important types of Anglo-Saxon poetry are the lyric and the riddle. The lyric,
deals with personal feelings or emotions, presents a more personal and emotional form of
poetry than the epic. The riddle, a form of poetry in which an object or person is described in
a rather ambiguous manner, demonstrates the Anglo-Saxons expressed their terror of the
northern winter, their awareness of the transitory nature of human life, and their reverence and
fear of sea because of its immensity its mystery, and its cruelty.
Unlike Anglo-Saxon poetry, which exemplifies the highly imaginative nature of the
Anglo-Saxons, the highly utilitarian prose writing from this period had its origins in the
Church with the priest and monks. Because Latin was the language of the Church and because
it was considered to be the language of educated men, the earliest prose writing was in Latin.
The earliest recognized prose writer was seventh century scholar Bede. Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History was translated into Anglo-Saxon by Alfred the Great, who was the most influential
prose writer of this period. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is a valuable source for church
history; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives an accurate account of the secular events in English
History.
Bede was translated by King Alfred into in English. It is not base on religious elements
but also it is based on historical events. With simple language Bede explains how the England
was and he wrote about the history of his country.
There are many other Old English poems. Among them are Genesis A and Genesis B.
The second of these, which is short, is concerned with the beginning of the world and fall of
the angels. It is a good piece of writing; the poet has thoroughly enjoyed describing God’s
punishment of Satan and the place of punishment for evil in Hell. Most of the long Genesis A,
on the other hand, is dull and little more than old history taken straight from the Bible and put
into poor Old English verse. Other poems taken straight from the Bible are the well-written
Exodus, which describes how the Israelites left Egypt, and Daniel. Another poem, Christ and
Satan, deals with events in Christ’s life. There is a good deal of repetition in this work.
It is time we examined a piece of Old English verse, and we cannot do better than take a
poem composed by Caedmon. This poem is perhaps the first piece of Christian literature to
appear in Anglo-Saxon England, and it is especially notable because, according to the
Venerable Bede, it was divinely inspired.
Caedmon was a poor countryman who used to stay apart when his fellows sang songs to
God; for Caedmon was uneducated and could not sing. One night an angel appeared to him in
dream and told him to sing God’s praise. When he woke, he was able to sing, and part of one
of his songs remains.
In his dreams a mystical person say to him get up and sing a song to me but Caedmon
says to her he does not know a sing but a mystical person says again: “sing a song” and he
asks which song? The mystical person wants to say him how the world is existed after he gets
up his sleeps he remembers his dream. Caedman is the first person the name we know in Old
English literature. Therefore in monastery understand that he is inspired directly from God
and they make him a priest.
Cynewulf who was Old English Poets, almost certainly wrote four poems, Juliana, The
Fates of The Apostles, Christ, and Elene. The last of these seems to have been written just
before Cynewulf’s death; for he says in it, ‘Now are my days in their appointed time gone
away. My life-joys have disappeared, as water runs away.’ Cynewulf’s poems are religious,
and were probably written in the second half of the eight century.
When Alfred came to the torn of Wessex he was not happy about the state of learning he
was not happy about the states of learning he found there. He began to improve the states of
education, founding collages, importing teachers from Europe, translating Latin books into
West Saxon (or Wessex) English, preserving the wealth of verse which had left its old home
in Northumbria. So now dialect of English culture became southern one.
Alfred is an important figure in the history of English Literature. He was not an artist
(that is, he wrote no poems, drama, or stories), bur he knew how to write good clear prose.
Also with helpers, he translated much Latin into English. He showed writers of English how
to handle foreign ideas.
He improved educational system in England and also make his country people much
more educated. Since the King Alfred is most important person who widespread of prose he is
considered the father of prose in English literature. His first aim was to improve cultural
activity in his country. After at the age of forty he translated many books into in English.
One of the critics, P. G. Thomas, says about Alfred: “The reign of King Alfred acquired
its chief glory from the personality of King. His character was made up of so many diverse
elements that he seemed, at one the same time, to be military leader, lawgiver, scholar and
saint, and these elements were so combined that the balance of the whole was never disturbed.
In the minds of posterity Alfred lives as the type of an ideal Englishman”
Another critics Jusserand: “Belonging to the Germanic race by his blood, and to the
Latin realm by his culture, keeping as much as he could the Roman ideal before his eyes,
Alfred evinced during all his life that composite genius, at once practical and passionate,
which was to be, after Norman conquest, the genius of English people…forsaken by all, his
destruction beings, as it seemed a question of days, he does not yield; he bides his time, and
beings the fight again when the day has come… he does not busy himself with learning out of
vanity or curiosity, or for want of a pastime; he wishes to gather from books substantial
benefits for his nation and for himself.”
For much of the later history of Anglo-Saxon times we are indebted to what is know as
the Anglo-Saxon chronicle- a record of the main happenings of the country, kept by monks in
seven successive monasteries, and covering the period from the middle of the ninth century to
1154, when Henry II. came to the throne.
After being setting monasteries, some priests begin to write important events which took
place in his country. Anglo-Saxon chronicle was written in disorderly until the middle of XII.
century.
In Old English literature there was also homily which is defined as half prose and half
sermon. Aelfric and Wulfstan were well-known homilies writers at that time.
Aelfric, who was important writer, is called as a grammarian since he wrote Latin
grammar book, of prose, his works, such as the Homilies and Lives of Saints mostly religious.
He wrote out in Old English the meaning of the first seven books of the Bible. His prose style
is the best in Old English, and he uses alliteration to join his sentences together.
Old English verse is in black and white. The Anglo-Saxons who tried to use the language
of the conqueror were very skillful.
If we come conclusion to what is certainly known about Anglo-Saxon literature is that it
is an imaginative, heroic, exciting and rich in tradition and like the literature of any era, its
poetry and prose reveal much that is worth knowing about its creators.
Lastly; the most important events in Old English literature are the coming of AngloSaxon to England and the second important event in English history is the conversion of
English people to Christianity. In Old English time writers were pagan and uncivilized and
almost unknown most of writing such as Beowulf which was based on imaginative.
Moreover, some important writings such as Battle of Maldon, Seafarer and Ecclestical
History were written at that time. Cynewulf and Caedmon were important poets in AngloSaxon time. Anglo-Saxon poetry is highly sensational, emotional and gives religious lesson.
Unlike, poetry we can say that prose was very poor in Anglo-Saxon literature.
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