Romanized Britons, Arthurian Romance, Alliterative verse and Development of English Christianity, Development of Middle English Prose and Verse, Anglo-Saxon Literature, Literary History, Background to English Literature, Allied Paper 1st Year, 1st Semester

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Unit 4: Literary History

4.1 Anglo-Saxon Literature

Romanized Britons, Arthurian Romance, Alliterative Verse and Development of English Christianity

Celtic tribes invaded England around 700 BC, their bronze weapons ensuring their victory over the previous settlers. the next invaders were the Romans. Julius Caesar made a brief visit to Britain early in 55 B.C., but it was a century later when the Romans arrived in 43 AD and stayed for 400 years. They also planted the seeds of a religion that was spreading throughout the entire western world - Christianity. In A.D. 410 the sack of Rome by German barbarians signaled the end of Roman rule in Britain. The Roman legions were recalled to defend a crumbling Empire at home, leaving the islands open to invasion by the Germanic tribes who had been raiding the coast of Roman Britain for decades.

The Romans brought their own language Latin to Britannia, which served as official idiom and was adopted by most of the population, which became Romanized. It is likely, however, that quite a few people remained bilingual and still spoke the previous Celtic languages.

The Anglo-Saxon invaders, who came to Briton in the later 5th Century A.D and eventually establish their kingdoms. They gave England its name, its language and its links with Germania, the body of Teutonic peoples whose migrations disrupted the Roman Empire. The Roman historian Tacitus had given his account of these Germanic peoples.

With the Germanic invasions, everyday use of Latin (and of Celtic languages) disappeared from the part of Britain colonized by the German tribes (i.e. England). The language of the Angles and the Saxons (Old English) retained very few Latin imports: it is almost purely Germanic. As with the Celtic languages, Latin etymologies survived mostly in place names.

Indeed, when the Romano-British were driven West or North by the Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, they created new Celtic-speaking kingdoms, which shows that these languages were still in use.

The Britons perhaps led by a Celtic chieftain named Arthur (likely the genesis of the legendary King Arthur of myth and folklore)—fought a series of battles against the invaders. Eventually, however, the Britons were driven to the west (Cornwall and Wales), the north (Scotland), and across the English Channel to an area of France that became known as Brittany. Arthur, who plays such an important part in Middle English Romance, was really a historical Cambro-British character from this period. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who first elaborated the Arthurian story (in his Historical Regum Britanniae).

The steady infiltration of tribes into Britain continued for over a hundred years. By the middle of the sixth century, the invaders, now known collectively as Anglo-Saxons, were established in various parts of Britain. Their culture became the basis for "Angle-land," or "English," culture; their vigorous language became the spoken language of the people, the language now known as Old English. The issue of the Anglo-Saxon Society is of great importance because the Anglo- Saxon society itself was in a way the ‘cause and source’ of Anglo- Saxon literature, i.e. poetry.

The conversion of the English peoples began with the arrival of St. Augustine of Canterbury in Kent in 597; he had been sent by Gregory, the Great. The Roman Church had sponsored Augustine’s mission. The pagan Anglo-Saxons adapted to the Christian religion, which had been introduced in Britain before the Germanic invasions of the Celtic-Roman Island.

The defeat and death of the Christian Edwin, king of Northumbria, at the hands of the pagan Penda, King of Mercia, in 632. It made the disappearance of the Christian church in Northumbria until its re-establishment in 651 by St. Aidan, Irish Monk and his followers from Iona, Scotland. According to Bede, St. Aidan’s “course of life was so different from the slothfulness of our times.”

The Anglo-Saxon invaders brought with them a tradition of oral poetry and the oral tradition was the earliest mode of literary expression (memorized and performed, not written down). It reflected essentially pagan values. Heroic epic poems such as Beowulf were later recorded by unknown Christian writers, yet they celebrate the traditional Anglo-Saxon virtues of loyalty, courage, and strength and the heroic adventures of early Germanic warriors.

Anglo-Saxon literature, most closely into contact with the Germanic origins of the invaders is the heroic poetry. The verse is alliterative and stressed. There is a definite pause (Caesura) between the two halves of each line, with two stresses in each half.

The early literature of the Anglo-Saxon period mostly took the form of lengthy epic poems praising the deeds of heroic warriors. These poems reflected the reality of life at this time, which was often brutal. However, the context in which these poems were delivered was certainly not grim. In the great mead halls of kings and nobles, Anglo-Saxons would gather on special occasions to celebrate in style.  

Later, as Christianity spread through Britain, literacy spread too, and poems were more likely to be recorded. In this age before printing presses, however, manuscripts had to be written out by hand, copied slowly and laboriously by scribes. Thus, only a fraction of Anglo-Saxon poetry has survived, in manuscripts produced centuries after the poems were originally composed. The most famous survivor is the epic Beowulf, about a legendary hero of the northern European past. In more than 3,000 lines, Beowulf relates the tale of a heroic warrior who battles monsters and dragons to protect the people. Yet Beowulf, while performing superhuman deeds, is not immortal. His death comes from wounds incurred in his final, great fight.

While epics such as Beowulf gave Anglo-Saxons a taste of glory, scops also sang shorter, lyric poems, such as “The Seafarer,” that reflected a more everyday reality.

There are four major manuscripts:

The Junius manuscript, also known as the Caedmon manuscript, which is an illustrated poetic anthology.

The Exeter Book, also an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th century.

The Vercelli Book, a mix of poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be in Vercelli.

The Nowell Codex, also a mixture of poetry and prose. This is the manuscript that contains Beowulf.

A manuscript known as the Exeter Book contains many of the surviving Anglo-Saxon lyrics, including more than 90 riddles, such as this one: Wonder was on the wave, when water became bone. Answer: an iceberg.

"Development of Middle English Prose and Verse"

 - The Norman conquest, Anglo-French language, French cultural domination of Europe, French as the courtly language, west Saxon dialect

In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, the famous William, "the Conqueror" defeated King Harold of England in the Battle of Hastings.

 

William was crowned King of England and a Norman Kingdom was established.

 

Norman Conquest is the dividing line between the Old Anglo Saxon England and the new Anglo-Norman England.

  

The Normans spoke an early form of French, which quickly became the ‘official’ language of England, overtaking the native language for governmental administration and legal matters.

 

But the Normans and the English had to communicate somehow, and their struggles to speak changed the English language.

 

A French speaking ruling caste on England, results that the Anglo-French language developed as the literary language of highest social classes for more than 2½ centuries.

 

Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more than 300 years.

 

French became the language of the affairs of government, court, the church, the army, and education where the newly adopted French words often substituted their former English counterparts.

 

Anglo Saxon (rapidly developing into that stage of English language known as Middle English) was for a period relegated to the lower classes. English remained the language of the vast majority of the people in England.

 

New French vocabulary was introduced to Old English, and the English grammar gradually became simplified as the Normans struggled with it. The Normans leave over 10,000 words to English.

 

As well as French and English, Latin was also an important language in the Middle Ages. It was used for some government business, for education and during religious worship in church.

 

When King John lost Normandy in the years following 1200, the links to the French speaking community subsided.

 

English then slowly started to gain more weight as a common tongue within England again.

 

A hundred years later, English was again spoken by representatives of all social classes, this new version of the English language being strikingly different, of course, from the Old English used prior to the Norman invasion.

 

Literature

 

        Having come from so many different places, that the Anglo-Saxons spoke an array of dialects. Although there was no real “standard” form of  Old English, toward the end of the period, King Alfred of Wessex addressed this educational lack with a large scale translation project and book production program.

 

At his behest, a number of important scholarly and religious works were translated into in the Late West Saxon dialect from Latin. King Alfred’s translations of Boethius and Augustine survive only in 12th-century manuscripts.

 

   After the Norman Conquest, many Anglo-Saxon nobles were dispossessed and a new French-speaking (Anglo-Norman, technically) aristocracy came to power. Ofcourse these cultural shifts did not occur in all places overnight.

 

However, over time, the Norman nobles cultivated a taste for continental styles of literature such as Courtly Love, Romance, and the matter of Arthur, while older fashions, such as Germanic/Heroic literature, fell into disuse.

 

Later in this period, speakers saw the rise of a more standard form of English, based primarily upon the dialects of London. Meanwhile, many authors wrote in French because it was the prestige language of the court, such as Marie de France (Lays and Fables) and Wace (Brut).