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VWO ENGLISH literary history summary complete
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A reader of English Literature1
, Epochs of British Literature
Epoch Approx. Dates Selected Major Writers
Old English Literature 500 - 1066 almost all anonymous
Middle English Literature 1066 - 1500 Geoffrey Chaucer
The Renaissance 1500 - 1660 Sir Thomas Wyatt
Edmund Spenser
William Shakespeare
The Age of Reason 1660-1798 Samuel Pepys
Daniel Defoe
Jonathan Swift
John Donne
John Milton
Romanticism 1798 - 1837 Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Samual Taylor Coleridge
Horace Walpole, Mary Shelleyv
The Victorian Age 1837 - 1901 Dickens, Tennyson, G.Eliot
The Twentienth century 1901- 2000 William Golding
Iris Murdoch Wilfred Owen Siegfried Sassoon
Samuel Becket,
James Joyce
George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,
Anthony Burgess
Joseph Heller
2
,Unit 1: The Anglo-Saxon Period and the Middle Ages 449–1485
Looking Ahead
British literature developed in an era characterized by foreign invasions and social turbulence.
Germanic tribes left northern Europe and invaded the island of Britain. The dialects spoken by these
tribes, now separated by water from the European mainland, evolved into a separate language called
English. Writers used that language to create works of great power and beauty-works that formed
the foundation of British literature.
Keep the following questions in mind as you read:
How did foreign invasions affect British history and culture?
Why was the Roman Catholic Church important to medieval culture?
The Old English ( Anglo- Saxon) Period c. 500 -1066
History
The Anglo-Saxons
In a.d. 43 the Romans conquered the Celtic tribes of southern Britain and introduced a standard of
living more advanced than any the Celtic tribes had ever known. Early in the fifth century, however,
when the Roman Empire began to fall, the Roman legions left Britain to defend Rome, and the
Britons became easy prey to invaders. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--Germanic tribes collectively
referred to as Anglo-Saxons--began invading Britain's eastern shores. Gradually, their warriors drove
the Britons into the mountains and took the land for their own. It was a bloody beginning for the
nation that would come to be known as England. The Germanic tribes founded the English nation
and their language formed the basis of English as it is spoken today.
The country was divided into a few kingdoms and they lived quite peacefully for a few hundred years.
In 596 Pope Gregory I sent missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. By the year 650,
most of England was Christian in name, though many people retained some pagan beliefs and
traditions. Meanwhile, Celtic monks from Ireland had brought Christianity to other parts of England,
establishing England's first monastery on the coastal island of Lindisfarne. With Christianity came the
glimmerings of education and culture.
As Christianity spread throughout Anglo-Saxon England, some men and women chose to dedicate
their lives to work and prayer. These monks and nuns joined religious orders, which varied greatly in
their rules for communal living. Some religious orders were very strict, demanding poverty, fasting,
absolute obedience, and manual labor.
English monks established libraries and schools within their monasteries, where they emphasized the
importance of the written word--especially of the Bible. Working as scribes, Anglo-Saxon monks
copied manuscripts by hand, thereby preserving much of the classical and Anglo-Saxon literature that
survives today. The Venerable Bede and other monks also composed their own scholarly literature,
which represents the first written literature in England. The earliest important work of this kind was
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People , which offers a remarkably complete picture of
early Anglo-Saxon life and times. However, like most monastic scholars of the era, Bede composed
his History in Latin, the language of church scholarship. It was Alfred the Great, the era's most
important political leader, who first encouraged the widespread use of Old English in written
literature. Alfred's greatest achievement in this regard was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an Old English
history in prose and poetry.
3
, In 793, however, Scandinavian pirates destroyed a famous monastery and this started a new period
of invasions, this time by the Vikings.
By the middle of the ninth century, much of England had fallen to the invaders.
However, the tide turned in 878, when Alfred, the Saxon king of Wessex, led his warriors to victory in
the Battle of Edington. After King Alfred’s death the Vikings’ influence increased again. At the end of
the 10th century a sort of unification was achieved and the Anglo –Saxons and Vikings lived together
peacefully. The Vikings too were converted to Christianity.
Poetry
In the Old English Period most people couldn’t read or write; entertainment came from artists
reciting poetry from memory or singing to a harp. Hardly anything was written down and the poems
we do know from that time are anonymous and besides that many exist in different versions. Most of
these poems are epic poems ; narrative poems on great subjects like kings and heroes, grim fighting
glory and honour.
To make it easier to memorize them Old English poems are mostly in alliterative lines without rhyme
and with a regular rhythm. In alliterative verse two or more words within the same line begin with
the same letter, for example ‘how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would
chuck wood? “ The majority of works known from this period are didactic ( meant to teach the
reader about religious matters) and historical chronicles.
There are many heroic types but during the Anglo-Saxon period, only the warrior was viewed as a
heroic type. Courage was an important virtue because through it a warrior could achieve fame and
immortality. Loyalty to one's tribal lord was also important, as was wisdom in making decisions and
guiding others. Physical strength was crucial to overcoming one's enemies.
Warfare was a way of life for the early Anglo-Saxons. Warrior families were led by a nobleman who
served a chief or overlord. A warlord was an Anglo-Saxon ruler who protected his people and led
them on expeditions. A warlord and his followers formed a group called a comitatus. The bravest
followers were rewarded with treasure and, in turn, they were very loyal to their leader.
Upon arriving in Britain, the Anglo-Saxons brought with them their Germanic language, religion,
culture, and oral literary traditions. Storytellers created songs about the great deeds and qualities of
warriors, and minstrels known as scops performed these songs. The songs reminded the warriors of
their goal—to be remembered for their deeds after death.
The two most important influences on Anglo-Saxon literature were the Germanic tradition and the
Christian religion. Germanic mythology was the basis for Anglo-Saxon literature. Anglo-Saxon literary
tradition was deeply rooted in the dark, heroic tales of Germanic mythology, which depict a tragic
world in which even the gods ultimately perish. Because there was no promise of an afterlife, the
warrior’s primary goal was to be famous in life on earth. With the coming of Christianity came a
promise of eternal life. These two beliefs coexisted and were combined in such works as Beowulf.
Because of constant intertribal warfare and the primitive state of science and medicine, life in early
Anglo-Saxon times was strife-ridden and brief. As a result, the early Anglo-Saxons believed that fate,
which they called wyrd, controlled human destiny and that one's ultimate and inescapable fate was
death. The hero's only appropriate response was to face this somber destiny with courage. Beowulf's
13 last words express the Germanic view of wyrd: "Fate has swept our race away, / Taken warriors in
their strength and led them / To the death that was waiting. And now I follow them."
4
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