battlefield topography, tactics and the names of local men who took part, names
recorded in Essex charters. We hear of words spoken at ‘the meeting-place’ rather
than in the mead-hall of poetic tradition. Maldon was a defeat of the East-Saxon
militia by Vikings in 991, and after it the ASCsays that the English paid the Danes
to go away. The purpose ofMaldonis not so much documentary, to record things
said and done and give reasons for defeat, as exemplary, to show right and wrong
conduct on the field, and how to die gloriously in defence of your lord and of
Christian England. Much of the detail is symbolic: for example, before the battle
Byrhtnoth sent the horses away, and one young man ‘Loosed from his wrist his loved
hawk; / Over the wood it stooped: he stepped to battle’. There was to be no retreat;
the time for sport was over.
The text ofMaldonbreaks off as defeat is imminent. An old retainer speaks:‘Courage shall grow keener, clearer the will,
The heart fiercer, as our force grows less.
Here our lord lies levelled in the dust,
The man all marred: he shall mourn to the end
Who thinks to wend off from this war-play now.
Though I am white with winters I will not away,
For I think to lodge me alongside my dear one,
Lay me down at my lord’s right hand.’This clear and attractive poem shows that the old ways of conceiving and describing
the ethos and praxis of battle still worked.The harvest of literacy
Alfred’s translation programme had created a body of discursive native prose. This
was extended in the 10th century, after the renewal of Benedictine monastic culture
under Archbishop Dunstan, by new writing, clerical and civil. The extant prose of
Ælfric (c.955–c.1020) and Wulfstan (d.1023) is substantial. Over one hundred of
Ælfric’s Catholic Homiliesand scores of his Saints’ Lives survive, primarily for use in
the pulpit through the Church ’s year. He is a graceful writer, intelligent, clear and
unpedantic, a winning expositor of the culture of the Church, the mother of arts and
letters throughout this period. His homilies are called ‘catholic’ not for their ortho-
doxy but because they were designed to be read by all, lay as well as cleric.
We have impressive political and legal writings by Wulfstan, a Manualon compu-
tation by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, and some lives of clerics and kings. Ælfric translated
Genesis at the command of a lay patron. This prose provided the laity with the reli-
gious and civil materials long available to the clergy in Latin. By 1000 the humane
Latin culture which developed between the renaissance of learning at the court of
Charlemagne, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, and the 12th-century renais-
sance (see Chapter 2) had found substantial expression in English.
Among the many manuscripts from this time are the four main poetry manu-
scripts. There was, however, little new poetry after Maldon. Changes in the nature of
the language – notably the use of articles, pronouns and prepositions instead of final
inflections – made verse composition more difficult. There were too many small words
to fit the old metr e, and the historical verse in the ASCshows falter ing technique.
The millennium was a period of cultural growth but of political decline. The
reign of Ethelred II (978–1016) saw an artistic revival, especially at Winchester, a34 1 · OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE: TO 1100