Lecture 1 2023/02/13

НЕФЬОДОВА ОЛЕНА ДМИТРІВНА

к.ф.н., доцент кафедри
англійської філології,
[email protected]
2 THEMATIC UNITS:
- BRITISH LITERATURE
- AMERICAN LITERATURE
16 LECTURES (8+8)
EXAM
TEXTBOOKS:
1. Шевченко І.С. Історія англійської
літератури для перекладачів (англійською
мовою): навч. посіб. – Х: ХНУ, 2010. –
257 с.
2. Lecture notes (Moodle ЛКМЯВ)

ENGLISH LITERATURE
English literature consists of poetry, prose, and drama written in the English language by
authors from Britain. It covers the time from the introduction of Old English by the Anglo-Saxons in
the 5th century A.D. to the present day. The works of authors from the former colonies of Great
Britain, including Ireland and India, as well as English-writing immigrants closely identified with
English life, are also considered part of English literature.
English literature is one of the oldest national literatures in the Western world: English
authors created important works as early as the A.D. 500's. English literature is a very rich
literature. It includes masterpieces in many genres, particularly, the novel, the short story, the
lyrical and the narrative poems, the essay, the comedy, and the tragedy.
English authors have always been deeply interested in the political and social conditions
of their times. In their works, they have described, criticized, and commented on the society in
which they lived and often used their works to promote economic, political, and social reforms, as
well as to reach purely aesthetic goals.
English literature closely follows the development of the English nation. It is convenient to
divide it into periods with regard to the stages of its development, its landmark representatives,
and the history of Great Britain.

ENGLISH LITERATURE TIMELINE

1. Old English literature (500−1100)
2. Middle English literature (1100−1485)
3. Elizabethan and Renaissance literature (1485−1603)
4. The literature of the royalists and the Puritans (1603−1660)
5. The literature of the Restoration Period (1660−1700), the Augustan Age (1700−1750), the Age
of Johnson (1750−1784)
6. Romantic literature (1784−1832)
7. Victorian literature (1837−1901)
8. Early modern English literature (1901−1940s)
9. English literature of the second half of the 20th century (1940s−2000s)
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10. Contemporary English literature (2000s till now)

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OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (450 A.D.−1100 A.D.)

Historical Background (optional reading)
Britain was first mentioned by ancient
Greeks as a remote and mysterious place. The
British Isles got their name from their original
population – Ancient Britons (Brythons), or Brits,
who evolved from the nomadic Stone Age
hunters and fishermen. Celtic tribes started
coming to the Isles from the continent in the 8 th
century B.C. In about 450 B.C., they occupied
the whole of the British Isles, living in small
patriarchal family clans (tribes). Their basic
activity was war and farming based on the
common land ownership. The ancient Britons
were pagans headed by druids (Stonehenge
being their most famous religious monument).
In 55 B.C., the Isles were conquered by the troops of Julius Caesar and, until the
withdrawal of the Roman legions in 407 A.D., Britain became a province of the Roman Empire.
Despite several uprisings of the Celtic population, like the defeated rebellion of Queen Boadicae in
59-61 A.D., the Celts were chiefly subordinated. The Roman civilization introduced the Britons to
Christianity; the Romans built good roads and founded many commercial centers, including
London (former Roman Londinium); they erected the Hadrian’s Wall protecting Roman Britain from
the hostile northern Picts and Scots. Yet, the Romans never were quite at home at the Isles and
hardly mixed with the native population.

When the Romans left in 407 A.D., the whole British population numbered about 5 mln
people. The withdrawal of Roman troops was caused by the general migration of the peoples in
Western Europe and collapse of the Roman Empire. The Germanic tribes, including the Angles,
the Saxons, and the Jutes, poured into Britain and drove the original Celtic population into the
inaccessible mountainous and insular regions of Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland. The
Anglo-Saxon tribes established many kingdoms in the British Isles, with 7 most powerful ones,
namely East Anglia, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, which spoke the three
principal dialects (Wessex, Mercian and Northumbrian) and were at the state of permanent war
with each other. Saxon kings of these days, including King Offa of Mercia (757-796), the first

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person to claim to be the king of all England, were mainly warlords, elected by a group of leading
warriors and religious figures, called ‘Witan’.

In general, Anglo-Saxon social life was organized in much smaller units than the Roman
urban civilization. Typically, Anglo-Saxons lived in small communities of families dwelling in huts
arranged around the lord’s house – mead hall. Thus Anglo-Saxons represented two classes, the
eorls (lords) and the ceorls (bondsmen), former captives and their descendants. In peace times,
they were fishermen or farmers. Anglo-Saxon farmers introduced the new technology of
agriculture: a three-field system (one for spring crops, one for autumn crops and one to rest
fallow). This system required the division of all the land into long strips and close cooperation of
the families in the village. It united the village and served the basis of British agriculture until the
18th century.
Originally, the Anglo-Saxons were pagans, the names of their gods survive in the names
of the seven days of the week: Tu (Tuesco), god of darkness (Tuesday), Woden, god of war
(Wednesday), Thor, god of thunder, (Thursday), Freida, goddess of prosperity (Friday). Their
paganism substituted Christianity of the earlier Romans. The ideology of the Anglo-Saxon society
was based upon a powerful feeling of Fate (‘wyrd’), meaning the transience of all earthly things
and ultimate victory of chaos; yet, against such doom there was man’s courage. The Anglo-Saxon
ideology included the following basic values: a) the lord’s heroic ideal of excellence in everything,
primarily fighting and generosity to his warriors, b) the lord’s followers’ heroic ideal of loyalty to
one’s lord (to die for him in battle was a supreme virtue), and c) hospitality.
The conversion of Anglo-Saxons to Christianity
started in the 6-7th centuries separately by Irish
missionaries and St. Augustine of Canterbury,
who was sent to Britain by Pope Gregory in
597 A.D. The country became Christian within
two generations, by about 660 A.D. Christianity
brought about education, and reading included
not only the Scripture, but also Roman and
Greek authors. Christianity promoted writing:
the first written specimen of Anglo-Saxon is a
code of laws by the first English Christian king.

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Christianity was tolerant towards the existing pagan culture and brought about the monastic
practice of recording and preserving the existing works of Anglo-Saxon pagan literature and
folklore.
The rule of Anglo-Saxons ended when a new wave of sea-raiders came to the Isles in the
8th−10th centuries A.D. They were the Danes (Vikings) from Denmark and Norway, who occupied
large areas in the north and east of England. Only the skill and bravery of the most prominent ruler
of the period, Wessex king Alfred the Great (849−901), and later his grandson, Athelstan
(925−940), brought peace and political stability and promoted culture. But all this was achieved at
the cost of giving the Vikings a large part of the country, Danelagh (‘the Daneslaw’). Later, the
whole Britain was ruled by Danish kings from 1017 till 1042.

A modern (inaccurate) representation of a Viking

and his ship

A monument to King Alfred the Great (849-901)

After the death of the last Saxon King, Edward the Confessor (1040-1066), the Royal
Council, the Witan, elected Harald Godwinson as the next king to rule Britain. But the leader of the
Normans, who, originally Norwegian, got their name after conquering northern France
(Normandy), William, Duke of Normandy, had strong family connections with the late Edward the
Confessor and also claimed the throne of England. The French-speaking Norman cavalry headed
by William defeated the Saxon army in the battle of Hastings in 1066 and invaded the whole
country, starting a new period in its history.

Anglo-Saxon Literature
English literature started as Old English poetry and prose composed in various dialects of
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, which was the chief literary language from about 500 A.D. until 1100.
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This language was brought from Europe by the Germanic tribes of the Angles, the Jutes, and the
Saxons, together with the Germanic poetic tradition, which remained relatively stable until the
conquest by Norman-French invaders in 1066. Old English is a Germanic language so different
from modern English in grammar, vocabulary and syntax that it must be studied as an
independent tongue.
It is difficult to judge about the development of Old English poetry, because of the lacking
evidence. What has survived is a small and probably unrepresentative sample, mostly in copies
done at the end of the period, namely 4 books:
1) The Beowulf manuscript (Codex Vitellius). It miraculously survived a library fire in 1731,
though its edges got burnt and later crumbled (the same fire burnt the manuscript of “ The Battle of
Maldon”, another Old English classic). Codex Vitellius is now preserved in the British Library and
the text of the poem is studied by the two manuscript copies made 5 years after the fire, when the
damage was not that grave.
2) The best preserved is Codex Junius, a manuscript of four biblical poems, which now
rests in the Bodlean library in Oxford.
3) The Vercelli manuscript with “The Dream of the Rood,” found in the cathedral library of a
small Italian town of Vercelli, where it must have been left by a pilgrim on his way to Rome.
4) The Exeter manuscript with elegies and riddles, presented to the library of Exeter
Cathedral in 1072 by Bishop Leofric. It survived only partially, and its first and last surviving pages
are quite unreadable because of wine stains and cuts, as it was probably used as a coaster for
mugs and a cutting board in the kitchen.
Yet, despite the lacking data, it is evident that Old English poetry is quite homogeneous in
its form and displays the following common features.
Old English poetry belongs to tonic-accentuated versification type and is alliterative, i.e. it is
unrhymed and pays attention only to the number of syllables, alliteration (using words that begin
with the same consonant sound), and stress within the line. The main rules of alliterative poetry
are the following:
1) each line was made up of two half-lines, separated by a pause (caesura);
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
2) each half-line consisted of two ‘feet’ (each foot has a stressed syllable (X) and a number
of unstressed ones (x));
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum
x X Xx Xxхxхx
3) the two half-lines are joined by alliteration ‒ the same consonant of the stressed syllable;
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum
x X Xx Xx х x xx
4) a word beginning with a vowel alliterates with any other word beginning with any other
vowel.
Alliterated poetry was natural for Old English, in which the stress fell on the root
morpheme. The alliterated stressed words are semantically central to the verse and highlight its
meaning (subordinate parts of speech are never alliterated).
Old English alliterated poetry also heavily relied upon kennings: elaborate set metaphors,
which ensured its powerful imagery, formulaic character and, at the same time, potential for
improvisation.
“the sea” seġl-rād “sail-riding”

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swan-rād “swan-riding”
hwæl-weġ “whale-way”
“the sun” heofon-candel “sky-candle”
heofones ġim “sky’s jewel”
Anglo-Saxon literature was predominantly oral.
The Anglo-Saxons had an alphabet which consisted
of 24 runes, whose form made it easy to carve them
on stone and wood. Yet, the runic alphabet was used
primarily for religious inscriptions. Poetry
predominantly depended on the memory of the scops
or minstrels, who delivered it orally by chanting with
harp or drum accompaniment, usually at feasts.
Minstrels preserved the existing poetic works, mostly
heroic epic songs, and created new ones, which
would usually glorify a certain chieftain and his heroic deeds. Initially, Anglo-Saxons were pagans,
and for them posthumous fame and glorification in songs could be compared with immortality.
Thus, a skilled minstrel, who could make his patron remembered long after his death, occupied an
important position in the Anglo-Saxon society.
Only with the introduction of Christianity, which brought about Latin (a second literary
language of the period) and the Latin alphabet, Old English literature became written. Thus,
English literature began through the combined influence of the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the
Christian church.
Yet, being homogenous in its form, Old English poetry presented a large variety of genres,
including heroic poetry: epic, and shorter epics, elegies, poetic accounts of battles, thulas
(rhythmically arranged lists of names), incantations, riddles, gnomes, – and more recent Christian
poetry, including elegies and didactic poems.
The longest and the most famous work of Old English literature is the elegiac epic
"Beowulf" (composed c. 700, recorded in c. 1000, first published in 1833), written by an unknown
author in a mixture of dialects with the dominating West Saxon. This linguistic heterogeneity can
be explained if one supposed that originally the poem was written in one dialect and later rewritten
by a Wessex writer.

This alliterative poem is set in southern Scandinavia in the 5−6th centuries A.D. and does
not mention Britain, but deals with the Danes of Zealand and the Geats of south Sweden. The

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poem’s protagonist, Beowulf, a young hero of the Scandinavian people, the Geats, comes to help
Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, the Scyldings, whose mead hall (Heorot) has been under attack
by a man-eating monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf mortally wounds him with his bare
hands (having given the unarmed Grendel a sporting chance), Grendel retreats to his underwater
home and Grendel's mother attacks the hall to avenge her son. She is then slain together with her
son by Beowulf, who follows her underwater. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in
Sweden, tells about his heroic deeds and is given land by his king Hygelac, which he wisely rules
for 50 years. After that, Beowulf has to fight a dragon, which guarded his hoard for 300 years, but
was disturbed by the theft of a golden goblet and attacks Beowulf’s people, the Geats. Beowulf
defeats the dragon, but only with the help of Wiglif, and is fatally wounded in the battle. After his
death, his attendants bury him in a burial mound in Geatland. Beowulf’s funeral and a prophesy of
disaster for the leaderless Geats end the poem.
Through some of its characters and peripheral episodes “Beowulf” is linked to a network
of European legends and epics. Some of the names it uses are historical (e.g. Hygelac, who is
recorded to die in 521 A.D. as a result of his raid against the Franks, which occurred in 520 A.D.)
and the action is firmly attached to many points in the history of Germanic Europe, as well as
supernatural history. The indicated places and historical details give it a sense of immediacy and
physical reality.
The poem deals with the issues of male heroism and well-deserved glory, feasting and
fighting, which were central for Anglo-Saxons. It promotes the archetypal values of the Anglo-
Saxon society and also shows the triumph of Christianity over paganism: one of the antagonists,
Grendel, is viewed as a descendent of Cain, who is defeated by a Christian hero, Beowulf. To the
modern reader, the poem, presumably recorded by a Christian monk, shows the uncertainty of
human existence and explores man’s dignified reaction to the inevitable.
The original poem can be difficult for an impatient modern reader. According to the epic
tradition, the action progresses slowly, with elaboration of other episodes, embedded stories,
rhetorical speeches and laments. Yet such narrative organization if not accidental or unskilled: it
omits the present (50 years of happy rule of Beowulf) and balances his past (Grendel) against his
future (the dragon). The poem’s broad message, its contemplation of life and death, war and
peace, society and individual, good and evil, honor and pride allow its many contemporary
interpretations, from Christian allegories to Hollywood movies. “Beowulf” is not just a story. It is
powerful gripping poetry, as noted by its readers, including the eminent medievalist J.R.R. Tolkien,
who passionately proves it in his two essays “Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics” and “On
Translating Beowulf.” A brilliant modern translation of the poem was published by Seamus
Heaney, a Nobel-prize winner for Literature.

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That “Beowulf” was not the only Anglo-Saxon epic is evidenced by two pages in Old
English, previously used to strengthen the binding of an Elizabethan book, and found in 1860.
These two pages happened to be the earliest Germanic version of
“Waldere” – a popular European story of Walter of Aquitaine,
known from its Latin version (“Valtarius manu fortis” – Walter of
the Strong Hand) and other sources. In it, Walter, son of the King
of Aquitaine, Hagena, a noble Frank youth, and Hildegyth,
daughter of the King of Burgundy are sent as hostages to the court
of Attila, King of the Huns. There Walter and Hildegyth fall in love,
steal treasure from the court of Attila and run back home. Waldere
and Hildegyth are sought out by Guthhere, king of the
Burgundians, Hagena, and 12 other men. Waldere and Hildegyth
manage to overcome Guthhere and return to Aquitaine, which
Waldere rules for 30 years as its king. Yet, the first surviving
fragment in Old English presents only Hildegyth’s encouragement
of Waldere to go on fighting. In the other, there is praise of his
sword, followed by Waldere's praise of his own armour and his
defiance of Guthhere.
An example of a shorter epic is found in “The Battle of Finnsburg”, known to us from a 48-
line abstract and its short retelling in “Beowulf” (at Hrothgar’s feast, lines 1063-1159). The
described events date back to the times when the Angles and the Frisians still lived on the
continent as neighbours. It tells how the Danish leader, Hnæf, a guest at a feast of his sister’s
husband, Finn, the Frisian leader, renews a feud with him, which was ended by Finn’s marriage to
Hnæf’s sister, Hildeburg. The battle is fatal for the Danes, whose leader Hnæf falls together with
his nephew. Their new leader, Hengest, makes peace with the Frisians and stays in Finn’s house
for the winter. But Hengest and the Danes break the peace, kill Finn, loot his mead hall, and take
Hildeburg back to her people to Denmark (see also the story’s analysis in J.R.R. Tolkien “Finn and
Hengest”).
The tradition of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry is further
developed in poetic accounts of historic battles, in
particular, the late alliterative poem "The Battle of
Maldon" written soon after the battle between the Britons
and the Vikings from Denmark, which took place at Maldon
on the Blackwater River (the Pante) in Essex in 991 (it is
also described in the historic “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”).

The author of the epic remains unknown, though there is a theory that he was one of the battle’s
few survivors. Of the poem itself only the central part (325 lines) has survived in a later transcript,
the original manuscript perished in the fire of 1731.

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The poem, which is much less ornate in its language than “Beowulf”, tells how the Vikings
landed near Maldon, on an island in the Blackwater mouth, and demanded tribute; this was
contemptuously rejected by the Saxon leader Byrhtnoth, 65-year-old Ealdorman of Essex, head of
the local militia consisting of inexperienced farmers and a few aristocrats. The coming battle was
delayed by the tide, but overconfident (ofermod) Byrhtnoth allowed the Danes to cross the river
before joining battle, thus giving up the only chance for a smaller British army to win. In the course
of the disastrously bloody battle, Byrhtnoth was killed and the few surviving Saxons fled under the
command of Godric. Later, united by Aelfwin, the few Saxon leaders tried to rejoin the battle, but
continued to fall. The second half of the poem is a powerful expression of the traditional Germanic
values of courage in defeat, the Saxon’s loyalty to their leader, Byrhtnoth, their determination to
avenge him at the cost of their lives and earn eternal glory by dying valiantly in battle. The poem
does so in presenting individual actions, a short series of speeches of explanation,
encouragement, and boasting. The surviving fragment of the poem breaks at this point. Though
the Saxons’ defeat is not mentioned, the grim tone of the poem and especially the famous speech
of Birhtwold prepare the reader for the disaster.
Despite its late date of composition, the work is traditionally heroic and archaic. Its
presentation of values and the type of the hero warrior resembles “Beowulf” and other Germanic
epics, though the traditional values here are seen to be in decline. The poem finds a fine analysis
in yet another work by J.R.R. Tolkien, his fanfic play “The Homecoming of Beorhnoth”, which
dwells on the impossibility to practice Old Germanic values in the changing society.
Another excellent late example of heroic poetry is “The Battle of Brunanburh”, a 10th
century anonymous poem, also recounting clashes between the English and the Vikings.
Yet, the vast bulk of Old English poetry is specifically Christian, devoted to religious
subjects. After about 750 A.D., when monasteries firmly established themselves as the main
centers of written culture and learning, poetry flourished in Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom
in the north. There, poets wrote verses about Christian faith, the lives and hardships of saints.
Usually such religious poems were written in Latin, like those by Saint Aldhelm, an English
bishop. Even so, some of such religious poetry is written in the Anglo-Saxon heroic mode, in which
Biblical characters are represented as heroes who performed famous deeds.

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The leading Northumbrian poet was Cynewulf. Several

works are attributed to him, including the religious poems "The
Fates of the Apostles," "Elene”, and “Juliana” elegies, written
before 940 A.D., which express the sense of loneliness in exile
and an inflexible Fate.
The ending of the manuscript “The Fates of the
Apostles” by Cynewulf

Also remarkable are the late 8th-early 9th century

religious poems found in the Exeter Manuscript, like “Christ I”,
just two lines from which (lines 104-5) inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s
portrayal of Middle-earth and his character Eärendil (see the
illustration):
Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast
Ofer middangeard monnum sended.

(Hail Earendel brightest of angels,

over Middle Earth sent to men.)

Due to its oral form, most Old English poetry has been lost. What remains owes its
survival to monastic scribes who favoured verse with a Christian motivation. Such was the
earliest attributed short poem in English, "Caedmon's Hymn" (658−680 A.D.), which was
composed by Caedmon, a cowherd employed by the monastery of Whitby, and which consists
of nine lines praising God. Caedmon lived during the 600's and he is the first English poet
known by name, as his story is related by another author of the period, Bede the Venerable.
Reputedly, Caedmon preferred not to participate when at a feast everyone took turns singing
and entertaining the company. Instead, he would leave the hall in embarrassment, because
he could not sing. On one such occasion, he, no longer a young man, left the feast and went
to the stables where he had a dream of a man commanding him to sing about the creation of
all things.
Caedmon started singing and since that time he became a monk at a famous Yorkshire abbey at Whitby,

An interesting example of the merge of Christian Latin and Old English pagan poetry is
represented by the undated, though written before the 8th century, poem “The Dream of the

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Rood” (i.e. of the Cross) by an unknown author. Unlike other Old English poems on biblical
themes, it describes not the biblical event itself, but a vision or dream, in which that event, the
Crucifixion, is both symbolically represented and narrated by a participant.
An anonymous character, in his sleep, is told a story by the tree (rood), which was made into the Cros

The Cross is pierced by nails, buried and later raised and honored. At the end of the poem the
common dreamer can also hope to participate, as once a common tree did, in the victory over
death and burial. Though purely Christian in its choice of the subject, the poem develops the
topic using Germanic point of view and imagery, i.e. Christ is viewed as a young hero whose
courage is emphasized and praised.
Also “The Exeter Book” features 6 surviving elegiac poems, telling of sadness of exile
and separation from one’s lord or community. Three are remarkable monologues, two for
woman’s voices and one for man’s (“The Wife’s Lament”, “Wulf”, and “The Husband’s
Lament”). These elegiac poems are similar to lyrical ones, a more personal and emotional
form to emerge in later periods, describing a person or an object rather ambiguously and
demonstrating the Anglo-Saxon fascination for manipulating words. In such elegiac poems,
the Anglo-Saxons often express their terror of becoming an outcast, their awareness of the
transitory nature of human life and their reverence and fear of the sea and winter. “The
Husband’s Lament” is a message from a husband, who became an outcast, but later found a
big fortune, to his wife to join him, to make his happiness complete.
An unusual lyric “Wulf” is presumably written by a woman. It is a powerful cry of
anguish which has not lost its force even after 1000 years. Although the poem is rather
ambiguous, it seems to be addressed by a woman to her lover Wulf, who is far away from her.
The other man mentioned, Eadwacer, is probably her husband and the “whelp” – her
illegitimate baby son by Wulf.

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In another elegy, “Deor’s Lament”, the speaker, a former scop, who has lost his master’s
favour, recalls five old stories of life’s reverses and so derives from the past the only possible
wisdom: to be unsure of the future, and concludes each instance with a laconic refrain: “Þæs
ofereode, þisses swa mæg” (That passed over and so may this). The 42 lines of the elegy have a
clear composition, being organized into separate verses with a refrain, one of the two known
cases in Old English poetry. At the poem's conclusion, Deor reveals that he was once a great poet
among the Heodenings, until he was displaced and sent wandering by Heorrenda, a more skillful
poet.
In a way, thematically connected with “Deor’s Lament” is “Widsith”, an Old English poem
of 144 lines from the Exeter Book, compiled in the late 10 th. The poem represents an Old Engilsh
version of the old Germanic genre – the thula, or a rhythmic enumeration of names. It starts with
an introduction by the scop Widsith (his name meaning ‘travelling widely’) and then presents three
such names 'catalogues' – of kings and their people; of names of the peoples and the heroes the
narrator visited.
Of the 6, the remaining two elegies, “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”, come with
Christian consolation. ‘The Seafarer’ gives a first-person account of the hardships of life at sea.
However, as he comes to contrast sea-life with land-life, he starts to glorify the rigors of the sea. It
turns out, that, unlike other elegies, the hardship of the sea is voluntarily undertaken, not imposed
by fate. The speaker later confesses his longing for the sea, and contrasts the land (the miseries
of earthly life) and the heaven (heavenly home).
Prose in Old English was a later achievement represented by many religious works.
Unlike the imaginative Anglo-Saxon poetry, which during the Old English period was at its end,

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Anglo-Saxon prose sprang from the utilitarian Latin church tradition and only began its
development. Yet, the distinction between verse and prose during this period is not always clear,
partially because scribes used to write both continuously, from margin to margin, and because
alliterative verse is quite close to rhythmic prose:
Þa com þær regen and micel flod, and þær bleowon windas, and ahruron on þæt
hus, and hit na ne feoll; soþlice hit wæs ofer stan getimbrod. (Matthew 7:25)
(And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;
and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock).
Another challenge comes from the modern understanding of literary prose as fiction,
which was hardly to be found during the Old English period. Old English prose is almost
exclusively religious, instructive, and historical.
The most prominent prosaic work of the Old English period and probably the first history
of the English people is the Latin work “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum” ("Ecclesiastical
History of the English People") (731) by a highly educated Northumbrian monk, Saint Bede
(Baeda) the Venerable (673-735).
St. Bede was born in northeast of England, became
a novice at the age of 7, studied at the monasteries
of Wearmouth and Jarrow, became a monk, like
most educated people of his time, and spent his life
at Jarrow. He had an international fame of a greatest
scholar of his age. He could read Greek and some
Hebrew and was familiar with the writings of earlier
theologians – St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Pope
Gregory, and St. Jerome. His “History” was first
published in Latin and then translated among other
works by King Alfred the Great between 871 and
899.
His “History” tells about the Anglo-Saxon conquest and life of the petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but
its main topic is the spread of Christianity and the growth of the English church. This work is the
first history of the English people, as well as a hagiography and a moral work − a valuable source
of information about English life, history, tales and legends from the late 500's to 731. The history
has a simple and direct style and includes many fascinating stories. Scholar and historian, Bede
the Venerable also wrote scientific works largely concerning chronology and calendar, lives of
saints (like the life of St. Cuthbert in verse and prose), and historical treatises. He is also the
author of the first known works in linguistics by an English scholar: “De orthographia” (on
spelling) and “De arte metrica” (on the art of versification).
Most prose writers wrote in Latin until the late 800's, when King Alfred the Great of
Wessex (849−901) in southeastern England became the first known prosaic writer in Old English
and started translations of Latin works into the Wessex dialect of Old English.

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Besides Bede’s “History”, King Alfred’s

translations into Old English include abstracts
from the Bible, Augustine’s “Soliloquies” and a
famous treatise by a Roman scholar Boethius
“Consolation of Philosophy” about heroic
stoicism, which proved congenial to the British
temperament. King Alfred the Great, who also
built up the first English Navy and a code of
laws, also initiated historical writing in Old
English, which began with the "Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle" (from about 892 to 1154). It
presents important national and local historic
events.
The Chronicle started as brief notes of yearly events but later it became a dignified and
even poetic record of current events in England, finishing with a description of the sufferings of the
native population under Norman rule. The existing version of the "Chronicle" dates from King
Alfred's reign and was compiled from earlier records (now lost). Another chronicle in the Wessex
dialect is “Parker’s Chronicle” written by 891.
Yet, the best of Anglo-Saxon prose was produced a
century later, in the age of the Monastic Revival, by the monk
Wulfstan (d. 1023, best known for his “Sermon to the
English”) and yet another monk, Aelfric (c. 1000). The latter
was a Benedictine monk, later Abbot of Eynham in
Oxfordshire. He left a large body of vernacular writings, aimed
at presenting Christian faith and learning for English readers.
His writings include two sets of “Catholic Homilies” (short
moral essays) (992) in Old English and a set of Saints’ Lives,
completed about 10 years later. Aelfric was educated at the
great monastery of Winchester by one of the leaders of the
English Monastic Revival, St. Aethelwold, and was one of the
grammarians who thoroughly developed and standardized
written English, known as Late West Saxon. Aelfric wrote also
the first Latin grammar in English, and he took great pains to
perfect his own writings and asked not to alter his idiom in
rewriting. His artful rhythmic prose deservedly was the first of Old English works to be printed
during the later period.
A minor genre of Old English prose was the riddle: a
question or statement that contains a deliberately hidden
meaning to be disclosed. Yet, the Old English riddle differs
from its folklore counterpart. It descends from a similar genre
in Latin literature and, unlike folk riddles, is much longer and
usually unrhymed. Now riddles are viewed as amusement, but
they used to be regarded as a divine message to be
understood only by persons equipped with special knowledge.

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Riddles also used to illustrate another important feature of Old English poetry – the ability of
the scop to ‘vary his words’ beyond the limits of ordinary language. One of the major collections of
Old English riddles, about 100, composed in the early 700s is presented in the “Exeter Book”.
These deal with storms, ships, beer, books, and falcons, some being very easy, some very difficult
to guess. They all provide an insight into the way Anglo-Saxons used to regard the world around
them.
Unfortunately, very little Old English literature survived into our times, partially because
much of it was never written down and because only four manuscripts of poetry survived at all.
The first 350 years of Old English literature are poorly documented, due to absence of technology,
the oral character of poetry, perished books, of which only the total of 30,000 lines of poetry
survive. Our knowledge of Old English alliterative poetry is based almost exclusively on 10 th
century Wessex manuscripts. For a modern reader, the world of Old English poetry may seem a
dark one: laughter is mainly sardonic, the chief concern is war struggle, which practically always
ends in failure, one of the main topics of later literature – romantic love – is hardly present at all.
Yet, what is certainly known about Old English Literature is that it is imaginative, heroic, elaborate,
rich in tradition and beautiful in language.