Old English Literature

Unit two closed on a rule for every passage: when a term and the passage disagree, the passage decides. This unit begins the periods with the oldest layer the exam tests, and its governing idea is that a small number of works share one culture: sung, alliterative, heroic, elegiac, and newly Christian. Know that culture and the questions become questions about loyalty, loss and a faith arriving in a warrior world. We move in three steps: the setting, from Anglo-Saxon England to the scop, the alliterative line, Cædmon and Bede; then Beowulf, its manuscript, its three fights, its heroic code and its Christian frame; and then the shorter poems, The Dream of the Rood, the elegies, Judith and the riddles, before a procedure for reading a passage in translation.

We begin with the setting: the people who made England, the singers who carried their poetry, and its line.

First, where the Middle Ages sit on the exam.

ENL 0201 The Middle Ages on This Exam

The Middle Ages carry ten percent of the exam's questions. In the anchor's arrangement the period runs from the Anglo-Saxon poems to the end of the fifteenth century, when the Tudor age begins in fourteen eighty-five. This course gives it three units: Old English, Chaucer, and the rest. Ten percent, three units. Old English is read in translation.

Next, the people and their language.

ENL 0202 Anglo-Saxon England and Its Languages

Roman troops left Britain by four hundred ten. Angles, Saxons and Jutes then overran what became England, Angle-land, pushing Celtic peoples toward Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland; historians debate whether it was invasion or migration. Their language, Old English, is the ancestor of ours. Romans out, Germanic peoples in. Old English must be translated today.

Old English poetry was sung before it was written.

ENL 0203 The Scop and Oral Poetry

Most Anglo-Saxon poetry was composed and passed on aloud, by a singer-poet called a scop, and written down later. Beowulf shows a bard singing at the feast, and his songs foreshadow the story's own events. The anchor stresses how little survives: only four manuscript books of the poetry. Sung first, written later, mostly lost. Four manuscripts carry the whole tradition.

The poetry has its own line and figure.

ENL 0204 The Old English Line and the Kenning

Each Old English line is two alliterating half-lines split by a caesura. The kenning is a compound metaphor for a simple thing: wave-rider for a ship, whale-road for the sea, gold-friend for a lord, earth-hall for a cave. Kennings are a signature of the period. Two halves, one sound, a riddling compound. A kenning names a thing; it is not a symbol.

The first named English poet was a cowherd.

ENL 0205 Cædmon's Hymn and Bede's Story of It

Bede tells of Cædmon, a cowherd who left feasts when the harp came his way because he could not sing. In a dream a figure told him, "Sing the beginning of creation," and he sang praise of God. The hymn is among the earliest Anglo-Saxon poems. A cowherd, a dream, a hymn of creation. Bede preserves it as a miracle story.

Bede's history preserved that story.

ENL 0206 Bede's Ecclesiastical History

Bede, an English monk later called the Venerable Bede, wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin, completing it in seven thirty-one. It runs from the Roman invasion and centres on conversion, crediting Irish and Italian missionaries and faulting the native Britons. Latin history, finished seven thirty-one. Bede writes conversion as his theme.

Now Beowulf, the longest poem of the period and the one the exam knows best.

First, the poem itself and how it survived.

ENL 0207 Beowulf: The Poem and Its Manuscript

Beowulf survives in a single manuscript from around the year one thousand, scorched in a fire in seventeen forty-one. It runs over three thousand alliterative lines in a West Saxon dialect, though its action is set in what are now Denmark and Sweden. No record of Beowulf himself exists. One burned manuscript, three thousand lines. English poem, Scandinavian setting.

The first fight is in a king's hall.

ENL 0208 Beowulf: Grendel and Heorot

King Hrothgar of the Danes builds Heorot, the greatest of halls, and the monster Grendel raids it by night. Beowulf, a warrior of the Geats, crosses the sea, fights Grendel with his bare hands, and tears off his arm at the shoulder. Grendel flees home to die. A hall, a raider, a hand-grip. Beowulf fights Grendel without a weapon.

Two more fights follow the first.

ENL 0209 Beowulf: Grendel's Mother and the Dragon

Grendel's mother takes revenge, and Beowulf follows her to an underwater lair, killing her with a sword made by giants. Back home he rules the Geats for fifty winters, until a theft from a hoard wakes a dragon. With only Wiglaf beside him, he kills it and dies. Three fights: hall, lair, hoard. Only Wiglaf stays to help.

The poem's values have names.

ENL 0210 The Heroic Code: Comitatus, Wergild, Fame

The comitatus was a lord's war band, sworn to die beside him; the lord, the gold-friend, rewarded loyalty with treasure. Wergild was blood money paid to end feuds, which Grendel never pays. Hrothgar's sermon warns Beowulf against pride and the hunger for fame, foreshadowing his death. Loyalty, payment, and the price of fame. The poem also questions the code it praises.

The poem holds two faiths at once.

ENL 0211 Christian and Pagan in Beowulf

Beowulf is a pagan story written down after the English converted, and the anchor reads it as placed in a barely Christian framework to justify preserving it. Hrothgar's warning against pride works in both value systems. Scholars still debate how far the Christian reworking succeeds. Pagan story, Christian frame. The success of the frame is disputed.

Now the shorter poems: a dream vision, the elegies of exile, a biblical heroine and the riddles.

A cross speaks in a dream.

ENL 0212 The Dream of the Rood

In this dream vision the rood, or cross, speaks, telling how it was cut from the forest and how Christ, a young warrior, climbed onto it bravely. Verses of it were carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross; the full poem survives in the Vercelli Book. The cross tells the Crucifixion as a battle. Christ is a hero here, not a victim.

An exile asks where everything went.

ENL 0213 The Wanderer and the Elegy

The Wanderer, from the Exeter Book, is spoken by an exile who has buried his lord and seeks another. It asks the "where is" question of loss: "Where has the horse gone? Where is the man?" The poem opens and closes on Christian consolation and is classed as an elegy. An exile asking where everything went. A Christian frame around pagan grief.

A second elegy speaks in a woman's voice.

ENL 0214 The Wife's Lament

The Wife's Lament, also from the Exeter Book, is one of two Old English elegies in a woman's voice. Exiled and separated from her lord, she sits in an "earth-hall," a cave. Scholars disagree whether her husband's family or her husband caused it, and some read her as a ghost. A woman's exile, in a woman's voice. Her circumstances are deliberately uncertain.

A biblical heroine fights like a warrior.

ENL 0215 Judith

Judith survives in the same manuscript as Beowulf and retells the biblical Book of Judith in heroic verse. The Hebrew heroine beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes, and the anchor calls her a female, more Christian Beowulf, rewarded with spoils like any warrior. A biblical heroine as a warrior. The poem is a fragment of the story.

The riddles describe a thing and never name it.

ENL 0216 The Anglo-Saxon Riddles

The Exeter Book holds the most famous Old English riddles, which describe something obliquely and leave the answer unstated. Their subjects range from animals and weather to weapons and writing, and some carry double meanings. Earlier Latin riddles printed the answer as the title. Describe it slant; never name it. The answer is not printed in the Exeter Book.

Here is the method for any passage from the period.

ENL 0217 Reading an Old English Passage in Translation

An Old English passage arrives in translation, so read for what translators keep. Listen for the alliterating half-lines, which date the passage at once. Decode the kennings: a whale-road is the sea, a gold-friend a lord. Place the speaker in the heroic order, lord, retainer, exile or peace-weaver, because loyalty, reward and loss drive the meaning. Look for warrior fame against Christian humility, and a Christian line framing a pagan grief. Then name the mode: heroic narrative, elegy, dream vision or riddle. And do not read modern feelings into the code: a speaker who outlives his lord is not merely lonely.

The capstone gathers the period into one picture.

ENL 0218 What Old English Poetry Values

Old English literature is the oldest layer this exam tests, and it rewards knowing a few works and the culture they share. After the Romans left, Angles, Saxons and Jutes made England, and their poetry was sung by a scop before it was written; only four manuscript books survive. Its line is two alliterating half-lines split by a caesura, and its figure is the kenning. Bede, writing his Latin history by seven thirty-one, made conversion his subject and preserved Cædmon's story. Beowulf follows a Geatish hero through three fights, Grendel, Grendel's mother and the dragon, with only Wiglaf at his side at the end. Its values are the comitatus and wergild, yet Hrothgar's warning against pride shows the poem questioning its own code, and its Christian frame over a pagan story is still debated. The Dream of the Rood makes the Crucifixion a battle; The Wanderer and The Wife's Lament are elegies of exile; Judith makes a heroine a warrior; the riddles describe and never name. Every work is read in translation, so form questions turn on the half-line, alliteration and the kenning.

This unit showed a few works sharing one culture. We met the scop and the oral tradition, the alliterative half-line and the kenning, and Bede's history, which preserved Cædmon's hymn. We followed Beowulf through its three fights, and saw its heroic code, the comitatus and wergild, both praised and questioned, under a Christian frame still debated. We named the shorter poems: The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer and The Wife's Lament, Judith and the riddles. And we read a passage in translation for line, kenning, speaker, values and mode, which is how the capstone's single culture turns into answers. Unit four, Geoffrey Chaucer, carries the story into Middle English.