The Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon period. 449-1066. The Germanic invasion. Anglo-Saxon civilization. Anglo-Saxon Literature Beowulf.
Characteristics of A-S poetry. 1.The Middle Period. The Anglo-Saxon Period.
Prehistory to the Roman Occupation. It is natural to think of Britain as an island, but in fact it became separated from main land Europe only at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years BC. At this time the population of Britain consisted of small nomadic groups of hunters and fishermen. There were several waves of invaders before the Roman occupation. A group of Neolithic people, often thought to originate from the Iberian peninsula, crossed the sea from Europe in small boats around 3000 BC, setting in the west of Britain and Ireland; they were followed in about 2400 BC by the Beaker people, so called because of there custom of burying there dead in individual graves with highly decorated pottery beaker. Celts fist arrived around 700 BC, presumably from Easter Europe or Southern Russia.
Anglo-Saxon Period 449-1066. The Germanic Invasions. From the departure of the Romans onward, Germanic tribes known as Angles, Saxons and Jutes first raided and later settled in Britain. The resistance of the Celts was slowly crushed and they took refuge in the remote, mountainous western areas (Wales, Cornwell, Scotland). There was no king of England by AD 650. The country was divided into small kingdoms. During the later years of the Roman occupation, Christianity had become firmly established. Anglo-Saxons believed in older Germanic gods and it was only through the Celtic Church that Christianity survived. A History of English Church and People. The first person to claim to be King of English was King Offa of Merica (757-796). Anglo-Saxon Civilization. A.S. shared not only a common language but also a heroic ideal and a set of traditional heroes. Anglo-Saxon Literature was an oral art with heroic or legendary episodes from the history of the Germanic tribes. The most famous work is the epic poem Beowulf, which survived in a single manuscript. Bede (673-735), was the earliest historian of England and an important prose writer. Bede’s “History of the English Church and People” was originally written in Latin. The translation into Old English, undertaken in the reign of King Alfred the Great, became a classic and helped the people of the emerging English nation to take pride in there past. Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.
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Medieval period. Medieval literature. The Romance. Geoffrey Chaucer 1340-1400. The Canterbury Tales.
