Augustine of Canterbury that he needed a written law-code; it was written with
the Roman alphabet.
The peoples to be called the English lived in a mosaic of small tribal kingdoms,
which gradually amalgamated. The threat of Danish conquest began to unify a nation
under King Alfred of Wessex (d.899). Under his successors,Angel-cynn (the English
people and their territory) became Engla-lond, the land of the English, and finally
England. English literature, which had flourished for four centuries, was dethroned at
the Norman Conquest in 1066, and for some generations it was not well recorded.
After 1066 the English wrote in Latin, as they had done before the Conquest, but
now also in French. English continued to be written in places like Medehamstead
Abbey (modern Peterborough), where the monks kept up The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle until 1152. Not very much English writing survives from the hundred
years following the Conquest, but changes in the language of the Peterborough
Chronicle indicate a new phase. ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (AS) is a Renaissance Latin term, used
to designate both the people and the language of pre-Conquest England. The
modern academic convention of calling the people Anglo-Saxons and their language
Old Englishshould not detract from the point that the people were English, and that
their literature is English literature.
Linguistically and historically, the English poems composed by Cædmon after
670 and Bede (673–735) are the earliest we know of. Manuscripts (MSS) of their
works became hard to read, and were little read between the Middle Ages and the
reign of Queen Victoria, when they were properly published. Only then could they
take their place in English literary history. Old English is now well understood, but
looks so different from the English of today that it cannot be read or made out by a
well-educated reader in the way that the writings of Shakespeare and Chaucer can:
it has to be learned. Linguistically, the relationship between the English ofAD 1000
and that ofAD2000 might be compared to that between Latin and modern French.
Culturally, however, the English of 1000 had none of the authority of Latin.
In ter ms of literary quality – which is the admission ticket for discussion in this
histor y – the best early English poems can compare with anything from later peri-
ods. Literature changes and develops, it does not improve. The supreme achieve-
ment of Greek literature comes at the beginning, with the Iliad ofHomer(8th
ce ntury BC); and that of Italian literature, the Commedia ofDante (d.1321), comes
very early. Any idea that Old English poetry will be of historical interest only does
not survive the experience of reading Old English poetry in the original – though
this takes study – or even in some translations.
Old English literature is part of English literature, and some of it deserves discus-
sion here on literary merit. Besides merit, it needed luck, the luck to be committed
to writing, and to survive. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes were illiterate: their
or ally composed verses were not written unless they formed part ofrunicinscrip-
tions. The Britons passed on neither literacy nor faith to their conquerors. The
English learned to write only after they had been converted to Christ by missionar-
ies sent from Rome in 597. Strictly, there is no Old English writing that is not
Christian, since the only literates were clerics.
Oral origins and conversion
It would be a mistake to think that oral poetry would be inartistic. The Germanic
oral poetry which survives from the end of the Roman Empire, found in writings
ORIENTATIONS 15Old English Historical
linguists speak of Old English
(OE), 450–1100; Middle
English (ME), 1100–1500;
and Modern English, after
1500.Homer(8th century BC) The
author of two monumental
verse epics: TheIliad, about
the siege of Troy and the
anger of Achilles; and The
Odyssey, about the
adventures of Odysseus as he
makes his way home from
Troy to Ithaca.runes A Germanic
alphabetic secret writing.
Runic letters have straight
lines, which are easier to cut.
See the Franks Casket (p.
25).