Papahagi Curs 1.

The History of English Literature (7th-17th c.)

- English boasts the earliest written vernacular literature in Europe
- Oldest poem in English: Caedmon’s Hymn  attributed to the poet Caedmon by
Venerable Bede (allegedly composed before 680)
- Bede- One of the most important theologians of early medieval England
- Caedmon- an illiterate poet who received divine inspiration and started composing
poetry in old English
- This allegedly happened around 680
- Bede died in 734
- Old English literature starts around 700
- Bede was an Englishman but his entire life was spent in the monastery, he only
wrote and read in Latin

One Thousand Years of Literature

- The period from Caedmon (670s-730s) down to the closing of the theatres by the
Puritans in 1642
- Old English literature was born in the margins of Latin
- 1600s- that is the end of renaissance-baroque-jacobean-elisabethan drama
- The drama in which Shakespeare shun and became the world’s greatest writer
- This all came to an end in 1642 when the Puritans closed down the theatres

Old, Middle, Early Modern

- In this millennium we divide English into three stages (different stages in the
development of the English language and consequently literature)
- The oldest stage is old English (Anglo-Saxon literature)
- It’s called Anglo-Saxon because the Angles and the Saxons were the people that
came to Britain in the 5th century
- It starts simbolically around 449 because that’s the earliest moment when
permanent Anglo-Saxons settlements and settlers are attested in Britain
- That is still Roman Britain
- It goes on up to 1066
- 1066- William the Conqueror conquered England (Norman conquest)
- William the Conqueror- a norvegian who had to be living in western France
- The Norse had settled in western France around 800
- Anglo-Saxons also come from Scandinavia
- Like the Anglo-Saxons the Normans were Germanic peoples but they spoke
French at that moment
- Therefore also linguistically old English comes to a halt- the official language
became French
- The language of education, law, of the church was Latin
- English became rather secondary, neglected around 1150
- Old English Stops with the last entry In the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
- the Anglo-Saxon chronicle is a historical document with entries on what is
happening in England every year - started in the 9th century – it goes on till 1154
- Language is changing dramatically- no longer old English but middle English
 - Historically the Middle English period starts with the Norman conquest and it
goes on until the Tudor age and the end of the War of the Roses in 1487
- Linguistically middle English cover the 12th to the 15th century and literarily it’s
almost the same thing
- From 1066 to 1200 some old English was still copied in manuscripts but very little
new literature was produced and practically English was no longer a literary
language
- It reemerged around 1200 so practically very little is happening in terms of
English literature and the English language from 1066 to 1200
- Early modern period which starts historically with the 1480s, the end of the war
of the Roses, the accession to power of the Tudor dynasty and for us it end with
the closing down of theatres by the Puritans in 1642.
- Linguistically it covers the 16th and the 17th century
- Literarily from around 1500 to the Puritan revolution
- We can say that old English is the language of Beowulf, middle English the
language of Chaucer and early modern English the language of Shakespeare

The Anglo-Saxon Period (5th-11th c.)

- English is a Germanic language
- Most words are of Germanic origin
- Nowadays a lot of English words are of Romance (Latin, French)- English has
become very much Romanized, Latinized after the Norman conquest
- Indo-European- the common ancestor of most European languages including
English and Romanian

Late Antiquity
- The world was dominated by the Roman Empire
- The Roman Empire had turned Christian gradually after the battle of Ponte Milvio
(312)- Constantine the Great converts to Christianity- issued the edict of tolerance
of Milan
- Christianism becomes state religion (382)- Christianity is a religion of the book, it
cannot exist without the Bible, without the gospels. The gospels have to be
preached and read to everybody, including to the poorest people. Every priest,
every preacher must have some kind of text to use in mass. This means that
literacy spread incredibly with Christianity (great increase in literacy). Christianity
also took this Latin literacy to Anglo-Saxon England.
- Without Christianity Europe would have remained illiterate for thousands of years
- Christianity helped spread the word, but also the book
- The Roman Empire was no longer very strong by the 4th century- Germanic
peoples pushed west from the east by Slavs who were pushed by other peoples
from Asia- were put in a lot of pressure on the frontier of the Roman Empire and
in 410 the Goths sacked Rome (almost utterly destroyed it).
- It didn’t take much longer until in 467 the Roman Empire came to an end, the
Goths took over
- The great features of the period (Late Antiquity) in Western Europe are
consequently the demise of the Roman Empire, the rise of Germanic Europe and
the conversion of Europe to Christianity including the Germans who were not
Christians for the most part
 - The period is not only one of fracture, it’s also one in which people were trying
desperately to continue the culture, the civilization of the Roman Empire, of late
antiquity
- Don’t imagine the middle ages as an abrupt, violent cut/hiatus separating
modernity from antiquity. – it’s also the moment when Christianity affirms itself
in Europe first of all through monasticism (in the monasteries they tried to
continue whatever literature survived from the ancient worlds.)
- Today, every single Latin text were transcribed by monks in early medieval
monasteries
- St. Anthony founds monasticism
- Eusebius of Caesarea writes the first church history
- Saint Jerome translates the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin
- Saint Augustine of Hippo writes the most important theological works of the early
Roman Church
- Boethius, who was a Roman senator in the Gothic period of the Roman Empire,
writes the most impressive humanistic testament, called the Consolation of
Philosophy (Consolatio Philosophiae) and he also writes works on geometry, on
music, on the so called trivium-quadrivium
- Saint Benedict creates the first monastery in the Roman world/Latin speaking
world
- Isidore of Seville and Cassiodorus tried to transmit as much encyclopedic
knowledge from the ancient world to the new one
- By the end of the 6th century we have a great pope in Rome, Gregory the Great,
who also decides that the mission should be sent to Anglo-Saxon England
- Anglo-Saxon England starts being Christianized, converted to Christianity in the
6th century
- First from the north, from Scotland by the Irishmen who had been Christian for
200 years by now (St Columba and St Columbanus)
- 597 -mission led by St Augustine – landed in Canterbury
- Canterbury is the head of the church of England

The Germanic Peoples

- From the Vistula river (which is today in Poland) up to the Atlantic Ocean in the
west, northern Europe is occupied by Germanic tribes that are divided into three
families: east Germanic (Goths- they will conquer Italy and Spain especially, so
the south of Europe), west Germanic (Irminones- today’s Germans; Istvaeones,
Ingvaeones), east Germanic (Franks).
- Ingvaeones (lived in what is today the Netherlands and the north of Germany and
Denmark). These are the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Dutch
- If English had evolved without the French influence, today english would sound
exactly like Dutch
- North Germanic group (the Scandinavians – their language was called old norse
and then it divided later on into different languages. The closest to old norse today
is Icelandic which changed very little from around 1200.
- 5th century Europe – the age of migration - dominated by the Germans –
Ostrogoths conquered Italy, the Visigoths conquered Spain, the Franks conquered
France, the Alamanni, Thuringians, Bavarians etc are Germany of today, the
Saxons lived in the north of Germany and in what is today Sachsen-Anhalten and
south of Denmark.
 - 3 populations: Angles, Saxons and Judes
- In the 5th century the Anglo-Saxons moved/settled permanently in England and
gradually they created a Germanic empire
- Until around 450 – Britain, not England
- England (means the land of the Angles) – after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
- Before it was Britain it was inhabited by the Celts
- The Celts were all over Europe
- the Celts in Britain have been Romanized – the romans conquered Britain in 43
AD so when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the Celts in Britain had been Romanized
for 400 years
- the Anglo-Saxons settled in roman Britain and when they ended settling there it
was no longer roman Britain, it was Germanic Anglo-Saxon England
- DON’T SAY ENGLISH WAS INFLUENCED BY GERMAN – ENGLISH IS
GERMANIC
- DON’T SAY THAT THE ANGLO-SAXONS CAME TO ENGLAND – THEY
CAME TO ROMAN BRITAIN
- The whole was not entirely Christian until 597

Old English Poetry

- Largest corpus of old English poetry – 30 thousand lines
- The Angles occupied most of England and the Saxons occupied the south of
England
- The Judes can be found in Kent
- By the 7th century – start having little kingdoms (Wessex – occupied by the west
Saxons; Sussex – south Saxons; Essex – east Saxons; Middlesex – middle Saxons)
- They were writing with runes (rune in old English means ‘secret’)

Frank’s Casket
- In the British Museum
- Made of whale bone – ivory
- In the margins there is an inscription
- What is represented on the front panel of the Frank’s Casket?
- What is written on the margins is a little poem: FISK FLODU AHOF ON FERG/
EN BERIG/ WARTH GASRIC GRORN THAER HE ON GREUT GISWOM –
the earliest English poem written in alliterative verse as a riddle on the Frank’s
Casket around 700
- A fish the flood lifted on woolly/ mountain/ grew the king sad when he on sand
swam
- It’s about a whale that was wrecked on a shore and could no longer go back into
the sea and died and they cut it to pieces and made that box out of it’s bones
- Anglo-Saxons loved riddles
- Fisk, Flodu, Fergen – alliteration (the repetition of the same consonant at the
beginning of different words) - typical for old English
- HRONAES BAN does not belong to the poem, it means whale’s bone
- What is represented on The Frank’s Casket?
o on the right side: the birth of Jesus (the Virgin Mary with Jesus on a
throne, the star and the three kings worshipping Jesus) – nativity scene
o the left side: the story of the Germanic Welund/Weland
  Welund is the Germanic God of Crafts
 The God Welund was imprisoned by a king called Nithad. He cut
his sinews (this is why his knees bend, because he had been
maimed so as not to be able to flee and to remain a prisoner) and
obliged him to create all kinds of nice objects for him (swords,
chalices, cups etc. of silver and gold). He took revenge by raping
the king’s daughter and killed the king’s sons (naked human shape
without a head). He beheaded the sons and made chalices, cups out
of their skulls and gave their father a drink of wine/mead from his
son’s skulls – typical mythological topos. After that since he was
imprisoned in the king’s palace, he twisted some geese’s necks,
made feathers for himself/wings and flew out of the castle (myth of
Daedalus and Icarus).
- Why would you have on the same box this horrible story of Welund and the
nativity of Christ side by side?
o They were still living in a society that was at the same time still a bit
pagan; still listening to Germanic stories about pagan gods and on the
other hand they had converted to Christianity for about 100 years – this is
what we call syncretism
o It shows you the residual paganism of this early Christian Germanic
culture
- If you turn the Frank’s Casket and look at the rear you will see runes but also the
Latin alphabet – the fall of Jerusalem in the year 17 in the reign of Titus
- So Jewish Christian history, Welund, nativity, and if you twist it on one of the
small sides you can also see the Lupa Capitolina
- So this is early Anglo-Saxon England – the synthesis of rome and jewish,
Christian, Germanic, pagan, latin, English, runes, latin alphabet

Runes and Crosses

- Ruthwell Cross
o Stone cross made in Northumbria
o The earliest moment in which English literature flourished was the
Northumbrian moment.
o Northumbria (means North of the river Huber) is the area in England north
of the river Humber
o On the margins of that cross in runes there are some lines from a poem
o Also one of the earliest texts in old English – The Dream of the Rood
o Northumbrian culture flourished around 700
o Around 780 a Viking raid practically destroyed Northumbrian culture and
for about 100 years not much will be copied and produced in Anglo-Saxon
England – from this early flourish there will be a period of hiatus.
 However, it’s at this moment that some of the greatest, most
splendid products of English were made (Lindisfarne gospels – the
most beautiful manuscript of England) – did it in the 700s on a
small island in the north of England only with pigments that they
could extract locally from shells and plants and stones
 The middle ages were NOT primitive – with what they had, they
were better than us, what they did was impressive, they used what
they could
  Their art – there is a mixture of Celtic, Germanic, Byzantine,
Roman motives

The Alfredian Age

- The second great moment came in the 9th century with King Alfred the Great
- King Alfred managed to push back the Danes/the Vikings/Scandinavians who
were attacking England
o The Viking although they were Germanic like Anglo-Saxons, were not
Christian yet, they were pagans
o They were also extremely violent and attacked the eastern coast of
England very frequently starting from the north
o King Alfred put up resistance
o King Alfred reigned from 871 to 899
 He started a program of translations  this is the second great
moment is old English

English identity: Pan-Germanism

- In the English identity however they still identify themselves with all the other
Germans on the continent
- In the most archaic English poems you will find a lot of references to things that
happened in the gothic realm, in Italy etc.
o  passage from Deor
 Talk about Theodric the Great who conquered Italy, ruled Italy
from Ravenna and killed Boethius
 Why should an Anglo-Saxon around 8-900 in the poems still
mention a goth who died in 500 something? – they still had this
common Germanic pre-migration/migration age conscience
 Did they understand themselves as one people? – no. They still
spoke about Saxons and Angles, sometimes they (the Angles were
the most numerous) referred to everybody as Angles (this is why
today we call it England and not Saxony)

English Identity: Christian vs Pagan

- In the early period (7-800) they didn’t yet have the conscience that they were all
the same thing however they did have a conscience that they were all Christians
and they called the Vikings heathens/pagans  that’s the first thing that united
that country, in other words it was once again Christianity

READ Sarah foot The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity Before the Norman
Conquest – R.M. Liuzza – Old English Literature page 51.

English Identity: language

- Linguistically, although they spoke the same language of course they could
understand each other from Northumbria to Wessex, they still didn’t generally
have a very clear linguistic awareness
- In Historia ecclesiastica written in Latin
- For Bede English was almost like a foreign language  don’t really have a
linguistic awareness in that early age
 - In the biography of King Alfred the Great, his biographer says that he would
recite poems in Saxon (Saxonica poemata), he doesn’t call them Anglica poemata
because King Alfred was Saxon, King of Wessex. However, in his very famous
preface to the translation of the Pastoral Care by Gregory in old English, King
Alfred starts showing an awareness of a common language, of a common
nationality, of a common identity.

The Benedictine Revival

- The Benedictine Revival in the second half of the 10th century brings about the
golden age of Anglo-Saxon arts and letters
- Above all, the Benedictine Revival means the foundation or reformation of
numerous abbeys, which promote book production  this is the peak of Anglo-
Saxon monastic culture:
o Transcription of texts
o Book production
o Growth of scholarship
- The third great moment in the history of old English happens at the end of the 10th
century and before the Norman conquest (from around 970 to around 1066). 
this is the moment in which most of our manuscripts were copied. Most old
English poetry survives in four manuscripts copied around 971. It’s very late
compared to Bede’s 700s.
- The dialect in which these texts were copied is called late west Saxon.
(Northumbrian is the earliest then early west Saxon in the age of Alfred and then
late west Saxon).
- Today when we say old English we refer actually to late west Saxon
- These 4 manuscripts are:
o The Exeter Book (in Exeter Cathedral Library)
o The Vercelli Book (in the north of Italy)
o The Junius Manuscript (in Oxford)
o The Beowulf Manuscript (in London at the British Library)
- Around 1000 a lot of old English prose is copied, especially religious prose
o We start having two names (until that age most literature was anonymous).
These names are Aelfric and Wulfstan.  TWO IMPORTANT
ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS
- The Benedictine Revival meant that under the Benedictine rule (the rule of Saint
Benedict) of western monasticism, a lot of monasteries were founded/established
in England (York, Ramsey, Worcester, Abbington, London, Canterbury,
Winchester, Glastonbury etc.)
- In monasteries they copied books – we have a lot more books copied after the
Benedictine Revival in England than before that age.  this is how our poetry has
survived
- If the Beowulf manuscript had gone lost (it almost burned in 1733) we would lost
one fourth of English poetry