Literature From The Anglo-Saxon Period Through The Seventeenth Century
...English Literature, literature produced in England, from the introduction of Old English by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century to the present.
The Anglo-saxon period extends from about 450 to 1066, the year of the Norman-French conquest of England. The Germanic tribes from Europe who overran England in the 5th century, after the Roman withdrawal, brought with them the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, language, which is the basis of Modern English . They also brought a specific poetic tradition, the formal character of which remained surprisingly constant until the termination of their rule by the Norman-French invaders six centuries later.
Much of Old English poetry was probably intended to be chanted, with harp accompaniment, by the Anglo-Saxon scop, or bard. Often bold and strong, but also mournful and elegiac in spirit,as "The Wife's Lament" Anonymous, this poetry emphasizes the sorrow and ultimate futility of life and the helplessness of humans before the power of fate. Almost all this poetry is composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line, or verse, of four stressed syllables alternating with an indeterminate number of unstressed ones. This line strikes strangely on ears habituated to the usual modern pattern, in which the rhythmical unit, or foot, theoretically consists of a constant number of unaccented syllables that always precede or follow any stressed syllable. Another feature in the formal character of Old English poetry is structural alliteration, or the use of syllables beginning with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in each line.
All these qualities of form and spirit are exemplified in the epic poem Beowulf. Beginning and ending with the funeral of a great king, and composed against a background of impending disaster, it describes the exploits of a Scandinavian culture hero,...
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