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Old English literature (or Anglo-Saxon literature) encompasses literature written in

Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period from the

7th 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.[1] In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant

corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.[1]

Among the most important works of this period is the poem  Beowulf , which has achievednational epic status in England.[1] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle otherwise proves

significant to study of the era, preserving a chronology of early English history, while the

 poem Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century survives as the oldest extant work of literature in English.[1]

Anglo-Saxon literature has gone through different periods of research—in the 19th and

early 20th centuries the focus was on the Germanic roots of English, later the literary

merits were emphasised, and today the focus is upon paleography and the physical

manuscripts themselves more generally: scholars debate such issues as dating, place of origin, authorship, and the connections between Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest of 

Europe in the Middle Ages.[1]

Overview

A large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written

during the last 300 years (9th to 11th centuries), in both Latin and the vernacular . Old

English literature began, in written form, as a practical necessity in the aftermath of theDanish invasions —-church officials were concerned that because of the drop in Latin

literacy no one could read their work. Likewise King Alfred the Great (849–899),

wanting to restore English culture, lamented the poor state of Latin education:

So general was [educational] decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could...translate a letter from Latin into English; and I believe there

were not many beyond the Humber 

 — Pastoral Care, introduction

Alfred the Great proposed that students be educated in Old English, and those whoexcelled would go on to learn Latin. In this way many of the texts that have survived are

typical teaching and student-oriented texts.

The bulk of the prose literature is historical or religious in nature.[1] There wereconsiderable losses of manuscripts as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the16th century.[1] Scholarly study of the language began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I

when Matthew Parker and others obtained whatever manuscripts they could.[1]

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Extant manuscripts

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The Peterborough Chronicle,in a hand of about 1150, is one of the major sources of the

 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the initial page

In total there are about 400 surviving manuscripts containing Old English text, 189 of 

them considered major.[1] These manuscripts have been highly prized by collectors since

the 16th century, both for their historic value and for their aesthetic beauty of uniformlyspaced letters and decorative elements.[1]

There are four major manuscripts:[1]

• The Junius manuscript , also known as the Caedmon manuscript , which is anillustrated poetic anthology.

• The Exeter Book , also an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was

donated there in the 11th century.

• The Vercelli Book , a mix of poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be inVercelli.

• The Nowell Codex, also a mixture of poetry and prose. This is the manuscript thatcontains Beowulf .

Research in the 20th century has focused on dating the manuscripts (19th-centuryscholars tended to date them older); locating where the manuscripts were created — there

were seven major scriptoria from which they originate: Winchester , Exeter , Worcester ,

Abingdon, Durham, and two Canterbury houses, Christ Church and St. Augustine'sAbbey; and identifying the regional dialects used: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West

Saxon (the last being the main dialect).[1]

 Not all of the texts can be fairly called literature, some are merely lists of names.[1]

However those that can present a sizable body of work, listed here in descending order of quantity: sermons and saints' lives, biblical translations; translated Latin works of the

early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills 

and other legal works; practical works on grammar , medicine, geography; and poetry.[1]

 Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous.[1]

[edit] Old English poetry

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this

section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may bechallenged and removed. (October 2008)

Further information: Alliterative verse

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In this illustration from page 46 of the Caedmon (or Junius) manuscript, an angel is

shown guarding the gates of paradise.

Old English poetry falls broadly into two styles or fields of reference, the heroic

Germanic and the Christian; these two are as often combined as separate in the poetry,which has survived for the most part in four major manuscripts.

The Anglo-Saxons left behind no poetic rules or explicit system; everything we know

about the poetry of the period is based on modern analysis. The first widely accepted

theory was constructed by Eduard Sievers (1885). He distinguished five distinctalliterative  patterns. The theory of  John C. Pope (1942),[2] which uses musical notation to

track the verse patterns, has been accepted in some quarters, and is hotly debated.[citation

needed ]

The most popular and well-known understanding of Old English poetry continues to beSievers' alliterative verse. The system is based upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of 

vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base

verse scheme; any one of the five types can be used in any verse. The system wasinherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic languages.

Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English poetry are the kenning, an often

formulaic phrase that describes one thing in terms of another (e.g. in Beowulf , the sea is

called the whale's road ) and litotes, a dramatic understatement employed by the author for ironic effect.