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Æthelred, known as the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet does not derive from the modern word "unready", but rather from the Old English unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised".
Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in early medieval England from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to Bede, the 7th century work Cædmon's Hymn is considered as the oldest surviving poem in English. Poetry written in the mid-12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. For example, The Soul's Address to the Body found in Worcester Cathedral Library MS F. 174 contains only one word of possible Latinate origin, while also maintaining a corrupt alliterative meter and Old English grammar and syntax, albeit in a degenerative state. The Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a late-period text, continuing into the 12th century. The strict adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th century work – as is evident in the works cited above – and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language, now called Old English, originated as a group of Anglo-Frisian dialects which were spoken, at least by the settlers, in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.
The Exeter Book, Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, is a (late) 10th-century book or codex of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is one of the four major Anglo-Saxon literature codices, along with the Vercelli Book, Nowell Codex and the Cædmon manuscript. The book was donated to the library of Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 130/131 leaves, of which the first 7/8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 pages are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest known collection of Old English poetry/literature still in existence, containing about a sixth of the Old English poetry that has come down to us.
"Wulf and Eadwacer" is an Old English poem of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem's complexities are, however, often asserted simply to defy genre classification, especially with regard to its narrative content. The poem's only extant text is found within the tenth-century Exeter Book, along with certain other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.
Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English devised and employed by modern scholars.
The Battle of Aylesford or Epsford was a battle between Britons and Anglo-Saxons recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum. Both sources concur that it involved the Anglo-Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa on one side and the family of Vortigern on the other, but neither says who won the battle. It was fought near Æglesthrep, presumed to be Aylesford, in Kent.
Næġling is the name of one of the swords used by Beowulf in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of Beowulf. The name derives from "næġl", or "nail", and may correspond to Nagelring, a sword from the Vilkina saga. It is possibly the sword of Hrethel, which Hygelac gave to Beowulf. Næġling is referenced many times as a fine weapon—it is "sharp", "gleaming", "bright", "mighty", "strong", and has a venerable history as an "excellent ancient sword", "ancient heirloom", and "old and grey-coloured". However, the sword does not survive Beowulf's final encounter with the dragon, snapping in two—not because of the dragon's strength, but because of the hero's strength:
The Timeline of conflict in Anglo-Saxon Britain is concerned with the period of history from just before the departure of the Roman Army, in the 4th century, to just after the Norman Conquest in the 11th century.
"The Rime of King William" is an Old English poem that tells the death of William the Conqueror. The Rime was a part of the only entry for the year of 1087 in the "Peterborough Chronicle/Laud Manuscript." In this entry there is a thorough history and account of the life of King William. The entry in its entirety is regarded "as containing the best contemporary estimate of William's achievements and character as seen by a reasonably objective Englishman". As a resource, earlier writers drew from this in a more literal sense, while later historians referred to it more liberally. The text in its original language can be found in The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154, edited by Cecily Clark. A modern translation can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles translated by G.N. Garmonsway. Seth Lerer has published a more recent modern translation of "The Rime of King William" in his article, "Old English and Its Afterlife," in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature.
According to the tradition of the Physiologus and medieval bestiaries, the aspidochelone is a fabled sea creature, variously described as a large whale or vast sea turtle, and a giant sea monster with huge spines on the ridge of its back. No matter what form it is, it is always described as being huge where it is often mistaken for an island and appears to be rocky with crevices and valleys with trees and greenery and having sand dunes all over it. The name aspidochelone appears to be a compound word combining Greek aspis, and chelone, the turtle. It rises to the surface from the depths of the sea, and entices unwitting sailors with its island appearance to make landfall on its huge shell and then the whale is able to pull them under the ocean, ship and all the people, drowning them. It also emits a sweet smell that lures fish into its trap where it then devours them. In the moralistic allegory of the Physiologus and bestiary tradition, the aspidochelone represents Satan, who deceives those whom he seeks to devour.
Christ and Satan is an anonymous Old English religious poem consisting of 729 alliterative verse, contained in the Junius Manuscript.
The Phoenix is an anonymous Old English poem. It is composed of 677 lines and is for the most part a translation and adaptation of the Latin poem De Ave Phoenice attributed to Lactantius. It is found in the Exeter Book.
The Durham Proverbs is a collection of 46 mediaeval proverbs from various sources. They were written down as a collection, in the eleventh century, on some pages of a manuscript that were originally left blank. The manuscript is currently in the collection of Durham Cathedral, to which it was donated in the eighteenth century. The Proverbs form the first part of the manuscript. The second part, to which it is bound, is a copy of Ælfric's Grammar. Each proverb is written in both Latin and Old English, with the former preceding the latter. Olof Arngart's opinion is that the Proverbs were originally in Old English and translated to Latin, but this has since been disputed in a conference paper by T. A. Shippey.
"Thureth" is the editorial name given to an eleven-line Old English poem preserved only on folio 31v of British Library MS Cotton Claudius A. III, at the beginning of the text known as 'Claudius Pontifical I'. The poem speaks with the voice of this pontifical or benedictional, interceding on behalf of Thureth who the poem tells us had the book ornamented. As Ronalds and Clunies Ross comment:
As far as we are aware, this is the only specifically identifiable book, aside from the generic book - or possibly Bible - of Riddle 24, that 'speaks' to us from the Anglo-Saxon period, albeit on another's behalf.
Bede's Death Song is the editorial name given to a five-line Old English poem, supposedly the final words of the Venerable Bede. It is, by far, the Old English poem that survives in the largest number of manuscripts — 35 or 45. It is found in both Northumbrian and West Saxon dialects.
Exeter Book Riddle 60 is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. The riddle is usually solved as 'reed pen', although such pens were not in use in Anglo-Saxon times, rather being Roman technology; but it can also be understood as 'reed pipe'.
Exeter Book Riddle 27 is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. The riddle is almost universally solved as 'mead'.
De creatura is an 83-line Latin polystichic poem by the seventh- to eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poet Aldhelm and an important text among Anglo-Saxon riddles. The poem seeks to express the wondrous diversity of creation, usually by drawing vivid contrasts between different natural phenomena, one of which is usually physically higher and more magnificent, and one of which is usually physically lower and more mundane.
The Death of Alfred is an Old English poem that is part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, concerning the killing of Alfred Aetheling in 1036. It is noted for its departure from traditional Old English poetic metre, abandoning the alliterative verse form in favour of fairly consistently rhyming hemistichs.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Cordasco, Francesco (1949). "The Old English Physiologus: Its Problems". Modern Language Quarterly. 10 (3): 351–5. doi:10.1215/00267929-10-3-351.
- 1 2 3 Rossi-Reder, Andrea (1999). "Beasts and Baptism: A New Perspective on the Old English Physiologus". Neophilologus. 83 (3): 461–77. doi:10.1023/A:1004389312704. S2CID 159989964 – via Literature Online (LION).
- ↑ Hoek, Michelle C. (1997). "Anglo-Saxon innovation and the use of the senses in the Old English Physiologus poems". Studia Neophilologica. 69: 1–10. doi:10.1080/00393279708588191.
- ↑ "sundor-gecynd". Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (digital ed.). Retrieved 5 March 2020.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Panther". The Complete Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
- 1 2 3 Hostetter, Aaron K. (25 August 2017). "The Panther". Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
- 1 2 Ross, Bruce (1983). "The Old English Physiologus". Explicator. 42 (1): 4–5. doi:10.1080/00144940.1983.9939366. ProQuest 1290319873.