A Very Brief Overview of Old English Literature

Here are the lecture notes from today's class. You can find other short histories of Old English literature in the introductions in your Norton Anthologies or other survey course texts.

I. Old English literature is the oldest vernacular European literature. It began with Caedmon, supposedly, who was inspired to use the heroic idiom to put Christian stories into poetry.

II. Learning and literacy flourished in the North of England until the Viking raids began.

III. By the reign of King Alfred, learning had deteriorated. Alfred instituted a reform of learning, requiring literacy of all public officials and educational programs in vernacular and Latin languages for children. Several prose works were translated as “the most necessary for all men to know”: Pope Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, St. Augustine of Hippo’s Soliloquies, and the Orosius’s History against the Pagans. Translated at the same time, perhaps by someone at Alfred’s court, is Bede’s Historia. Alfred’s court also began the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

IV. In the century following the emergence of the house of Wessex, a reform movement began in several monasteries. Called the “Benedictine Reform” of the 10th century, it caused a resurgence of trained monks and adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict. The reform, combined with the eventual payoff of Alfred’s educational scheme in the previous generation, caused a surge in manuscript production and in composition. At this point, Old English has a literary dialect, something no other vernacular would accomplish for centuries. This standard dialect was Late West Saxon; its most noteworthy practitioner was Abbot Ælfric, who wrote 3 series of homilies as well as translations of the Bible.

V. A word on manuscripts: production and survival.
* mostly made in monastic houses.
* written on parchment, created from treating animal hides (mostly sheep)
* copied in quires (booklets made from a single sheet).
* several were destroyed by Vikings. Several more were destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century

*several of the ones that do survive are in the “Cotton” section of the British library.

Keep going on your reading. On Thursday, we're going to keep working on translation in pairs. Start marking your books to help familiarize yourself with the sorts of information found therein--pronouns, noun declensions, verb conjugations, etc.