History of English Literature
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Old English 496-1050
Middle English 1050-1500
Modern English 1500 onwards
OLD ENGLISH
Old English literature encompasses literature written in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of England, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. ROMANSConquered the Celts in 55bc, left in early 5th c. Were civilized and developed. | GERMANIC TRIBESSaxons, angles, jutes, Scandinavians, picts, Scots.Were barbaric and uncivilized. |
Trends of that age: 1. The praise of the heroic acts of warriors 2. The adventures and travels of the sea-people. 3. Hebrew 4. It was oral. Music and poetry went side by side. (Lays were composed. Lay: a poem that was written to be sung usually telling a story) 5. It was alliterative and accented. 6. Literature was written in runic system. With system of lines. 7. The literature is not found in whole, it was in fragments and parts. 8. It contained no mention of women, only men related. b/c it had courage, loyalty, bravery’s incidents in it. The strong tribal system had no place for women in it. 9. Mostly the lit was composed in epic form. 10. It is anonymous in nature; writers are not known. Nature of the work is important, not the name. 11. It was full of riddles and compound words. Different words were adopted to denote to one thing; e.g ship= dragon of the sea. The old english had almost a hundred words for warrior, and about 25 for ship. It is the diversity of the language.
HEROIC
EPIC POEMS: 1) Waldhere
It is about king waldhere. 60 lines. Found in two parts i.e it is fragmentary. The subject is of crossing a passage. The
Old English 496-1050
Middle English 1050-1500
Modern English 1500 onwards
OLD ENGLISH
Old English literature encompasses literature written in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of England, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. ROMANSConquered the Celts in 55bc, left in early 5th c. Were civilized and developed. | GERMANIC TRIBESSaxons, angles, jutes, Scandinavians, picts, Scots.Were barbaric and uncivilized. |
Trends of that age: 1. The praise of the heroic acts of warriors 2. The adventures and travels of the sea-people. 3. Hebrew 4. It was oral. Music and poetry went side by side. (Lays were composed. Lay: a poem that was written to be sung usually telling a story) 5. It was alliterative and accented. 6. Literature was written in runic system. With system of lines. 7. The literature is not found in whole, it was in fragments and parts. 8. It contained no mention of women, only men related. b/c it had courage, loyalty, bravery’s incidents in it. The strong tribal system had no place for women in it. 9. Mostly the lit was composed in epic form. 10. It is anonymous in nature; writers are not known. Nature of the work is important, not the name. 11. It was full of riddles and compound words. Different words were adopted to denote to one thing; e.g ship= dragon of the sea. The old english had almost a hundred words for warrior, and about 25 for ship. It is the diversity of the language.
HEROIC
EPIC POEMS: 1) Waldhere
It is about king waldhere. 60 lines. Found in two parts i.e it is fragmentary. The subject is of crossing a passage. The