Old English literature
The Old English literature (or Anglo-Saxon literature ) includes literary works in Old English language, in which about six hundred year period from the mid- 5th century until the Norman invasion in 1066 have emerged in Britain. Most of them were not written down until the end of this period, because the literary tradition at that time was mainly oral. You close u. a. epic poems , hagiographies , speeches , Bible translations , legal texts, chronicles and puzzles. A total of around 400 manuscripts still exist today that serve as a text corpus for Old English linguistics and literary studies .
Some of the most significant works of Old English literature are:
- the verse epic Beowulf
- the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , a collection of texts on the early history of England;
- the 7th century poem Cædmon's Hymn , the oldest surviving text written in English.
overview
Of the large number of manuscripts that have survived from the Old English period, most were written in both Old English and Latin during the last 300 years of this age (9th to 11th centuries) .
Old English literature was born of practical necessity when, after the Viking invasions, there were few people who could speak Latin. Church dignitaries were concerned that no one would be able to read their writings. Likewise, the King of Wessex , King Alfred the Great (849-899), who wanted to promote English culture again, deplored the dire state in which Latin-based education had gotten in England:
Translation:
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Alfred found that very few could read Latin, but many could still read Old English. So he suggested that students should be taught Old English, and that those who excelled should learn Latin afterwards. Therefore, many of the remaining texts are typical student-oriented texts that were intended for the classroom. Altogether 189 of the 400 surviving Old English manuscripts are considered significant. These manuscripts have been highly valued by collectors since the 16th century , not only for their historical and literary value, but also for the beauty of their regular typeface and illustrations.
Not all of these texts can actually be assigned to literature. B. Lists of names and aborted writing exercises. Those texts that are of literary value, however, constitute a considerable corpus and include (starting with the largest category, in descending order): speeches and stories of saints, Bible translations, works of the early church fathers translated from Latin ; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative historiography; Laws, wills and other legal works; practical work on grammar , medieval medicine and geography ; and finally, with the fewest surviving texts but by no means the least important category, works of poetry .
With a few exceptions, all Old English authors are anonymous.
Research into Old English literature went through various phases: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the focus was on the linguistic, especially the etymological, aspects of the texts, and later the literary qualities were also appreciated. Today interest is focused on the following topics:
- Questions of palaeography (scientists of the 19th century had often dated the origin of manuscripts to an earlier point in time than they actually originated according to the results of modern research);
- Places of origin of the manuscripts (there were seven major Scriptoria from which they were drawn: Winchester , Exeter , Worcester , Abingdon , Durham , and two in Canterbury , namely Christ Church and St. Augustine's Abbey );
- Connections of the Anglo-Saxon world with the rest of Europe ;
- Identification of the regional dialects used, namely those of Northumbria , Mercia , Kent and Wessex .
Where exactly the distribution areas of the dialects were is a matter of debate in science, but at least essentially they coincided with the four English kingdoms mentioned. Northumbria had been proselytized by Irish monks , and the monasteries they founded (such as Lindisfarne Monastery ) were now centers of literary activity - but this came to a halt when Northumbria was largely conquered by Danish invaders in the 9th century and after the reconquest, lost large areas to Scottish attacks. Part of Mercia was also subjugated by the Vikings; the remaining areas fell to the growing Wessex, to which Kent was also attached. Under Alfred, King of Wessex, a long literary heyday of Old English began. With this in mind, it is understandable that most - if not all - Old English manuscripts are written in the dialect of Wessex, West Saxon. Alfred made West Saxon the official language and had numerous Latin works translated into his dialect. He also sent scribes to the regions of his empire who had previously only written down stories in the West Saxon dialect that had previously only been handed down orally in the local dialect or who transcribed older writings from other dialects in West Saxon. So it happens that of all the works of Old English poetry that are available in a Northumbrian or Merzian version, there is also a West Saxon one; B. from The Dream of the Rood and Cædmon's Hymn . The reason why some manuscripts (e.g. Beowulf ) contain elements of different dialects is probably for a similar reason: the copyists of the text came from different regions than the original narrators or writers.
Old English poetry
Features of Old English poetry
Division and sources
The old English seal can be divided into two areas, namely the pre-Christian Germanic and Christian. It has come down to us mainly in four manuscripts. These are the Junius manuscript (also known as Cædmon manuscript ), an illustrated poetic anthology, and the Exeter Book , also an anthology that has been kept in Exeter Cathedral since it was donated to it in the 11th century. The third manuscript is known as the Vercelli Book - a mixture of poetry and prose; how it got to Vercelli in Italy is unknown and is being discussed. The last manuscript is the Nowell Codex , also a mixture of poetry and prose.
The poets
Most of the Old English poets were anonymous. Twelve of them are known to us by name from medieval sources, but only four of these can be assigned with some certainty to Old English works, namely Cædmon , Beda Venerabilis , Alfred the Great and Cynewulf . Only Cædmon, Beda and Alfred have known biographies.
Cædmon is the most famous poet and is known as the father of Old English poetry. He lived in Whitby Monastery in Northumbria in the 7th century . Only one single nine-line poem has survived from him, which is called Cædmon's Hymn ( Hymn ) and is the oldest surviving English text.
Bishop Aldhelm von Sherborne (d. 709), is known through William of Malmesbury , who wrote that Aldhelm sang secular songs to accompany the harp. Much of his Latin prose has survived, but nothing remains of his Old English work.
The person behind the name Cynewulf has been found to be difficult to identify, but recent research has concluded that he dates back to the early 9th century; he is credited with a number of poems, including The Fates of the Apostles and Elene (both in the Vercelli Book), and Christ II and Juliana (both in the Exeter Book).
Rules of Old English Poetry
No rules or systems have survived from the Anglo-Saxons on how to write poetry; everything that is known about it we know from modern research. The first generally accepted theory was that of Eduard Sievers (1885), who distinguished five typical patterns of alliteration . John C. Pope's 1942 theory uses musical notation and has been partially adopted, but the most common and best known approach remains that of Sievers. This system is based on the accents, alliterations, assonances and emphasis rhythms. It consists of five variations of a basic verse scheme. This system is found in some form in all older Germanic languages and was inherited from Old English. A line of verse is divided into two half verses , the front and back. Each half verse usually has two stressed syllables. Two or more stressed syllables alliterate with one another, as in the following line of verse from Beowulf (Vs. 194–195):
| Anvers | Abvers | translation |
| (Þæt fram ham gefrægn | Higelaces þegn) | Hygelacs Than heard this in his homeland , |
| gód mid Géa tum, | Grénd les dáeda | a good man of the Gauts, of Grendel's deeds |
Two stylistic figures that are often found in Old English poetry are the kenning , which is used to describe a (often simple) thing in a formulaic manner (e.g. swan road for the sea ) and the litotes , a kind of understatement used by the author for the purpose an ironic effect is used. Comparisons are used relatively rarely . This is z. This is partly due to the fact that Old English poetry generally aims at a quick style , for which quickly accessible metaphors such as Kenning are better suited than comparisons.
Leitmotifs
In the works of Old English poetry, pre-Christian Germanic and Christian worldviews compete and merge . The Germanic worldview is determined by the principle of wyrd , the inexorable fate that the hero has to face. Overcoming fate can only succeed through the demonstration of heroism , through which the warrior receives immortal glory . This is also indicated by the lists of famous ancestors in the family trees of the main characters. The Anglo-Saxons knew little about an afterlife, or promised little, as an adviser to the king explains in Beda's Latin history:
- 'Talis,' inquiens, 'mihi uidetur, rex, uita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluuiarum uel niuium, adueniens unus passeium domum citissime peruolauerit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen paruissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec uita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec noua doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda uidetur. '
Translation:
- “The present life of man,” he said, “appears to me, King, in comparison with the time that is unknown to us, like the fast flight of a sparrow through the hall in which you eat with your generals and officials in winter sits with a warm fire in the middle while storms of rain and snow rage outside; the bird flies in through one door and soon out through another. During the time he is inside he is not touched by the winter storm, but after a short period of fine weather he will soon fly back from winter to winter and disappear from your eyes. So this human life appears for a short time; but what will follow or what preceded we know nothing at all about it. So if this new teaching [ie Christianity] brings a little more certainty, then it must be well deserved to be followed. "
- (Beda Venerabilis, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum , Book II, Chapter 13)
This Germanic worldview is opposed to Christian ways of thinking, which spread among the Anglo-Saxons with the missionary work and the increase in Christian faith. These ways of thinking have now been incorporated into the seal also increased, but they did not replace the Germanic intuition, but existed with her side by side: The hero enters remains as lone enemy and fate meet, but he is now a helping, comforting God for Side put. The fight against the adversary is now stylized as the fight against evil per se. Conversely, many Christian texts borrow from the motifs of heroic poetry, probably in order to offer the reader or listener a similarly exciting story as he was used to from the pre-Christian stories.
Oral tradition and written tradition
Old English poetry was an oral art. Our understanding of this is based only on written records and is incomplete. We know z. B. that the poet or singer ( called scop ) could be accompanied on the harp ; there could have been other traditions unknown to us.
The number of poetic works is smallest among the Old English texts, but Anglo-Saxon culture had a rich narrative tradition, only a small part of which has been written down or has survived the centuries.
Works of old English poetry
Earliest references
Runic inscriptions can be regarded as the forerunners of manuscripts and the oldest examples of Old English poetry, e.g. B. on Auzon's runic case and Ruthwell's cross . However, these inscriptions are very difficult to decipher because of their highly elliptical or fragmentary character.
Hero seal
Of all the works of Old English poetry, hero poems have received the most attention. The longest and most important, with 3182 lines, is Beowulf , which is recorded in the damaged Nowell Codex . It tells the story of the legendary hero Beowulf, who in the first part rushes to the aid of the beleaguered King Hrothgar and in the second part, now an aged king himself, slays a dragon. The action takes place in Scandinavia , and it is also likely of Scandinavian origin. The Verswerk has risen to the status of a national epic and attracts the interest of numerous historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and students around the world.
Besides Beowulf, there are other, lesser-known poems. Two poems are fragments , namely the Finnsburg fragment , a retelling of the battle scenes from Beowulf (some doubt, however, that it actually served as a model), and Waldere , which contains events in the life of Walther von Aquitaine . Hero figures are mentioned in two other poems: Widsith is believed to contain very old parts with events about Ermanaric and the Goths from the 4th century; it contains a list of names of persons and places associated with acts of fame. Deor is a poem in the style of consolation of philosophy , in which the strokes of fate of famous heroes (e.g. Wieland the smith and Ermanarich ) are compared with the current unfortunate situation of the narrator.
In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , a whole series of different heroic poems are inserted in different places (in brackets the year of their creation). The oldest, The Battle of Brunanburh (937), celebrates the victory of King Æthelstan over the Scots and Scandinavians. Five other, shorter poems sing about the conquest of the five counties that had been occupied by the Scandinavians (942), the coronation of King Edgar (973) and his death (975), the death of King Alfred the Great (1036) and the by King Edward the Confessor (1065).
The poem The Battle of Maldon sings in 325 lines of Earl Byrhtnoth and his men who died in a battle against the Vikings in 991. It is considered one of the most brilliant poems, but the beginning and the end are absent, and the only manuscript was burned up in 1731. The famous speech of a warrior at the end of the poem reads:
Translation:
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Old English poems were first passed down orally from one generation to the next. As the Christian faith began to take hold in England, the narratives of Christianity were often brought into the form of Germanic heroic poems.
Wisdom poetry
Related to the heroic epics is a series of short poems from the Exeter Book called examples of wisdom poetry . They are lyrical and boethical in their description of the ups and downs of fate. Gloomy moods are The Ruin , which tells of the collapse of a once glorious city of Roman Britain (Britain was in decline after the Romans withdrew in the 5th century ), and The Wanderer , in which an elderly man speaks of an attack that took place in occurred in his youth and in which all of his close friends and close relatives were killed; Memories of the massacre haunt him all his life. He questions the wisdom of the impulsive decision to take up the fight with a possibly superior opposing force: the wise man takes up the sword to keep society, he must not rush into the fight headlong, but must find allies, when his chances are bad. The Wanderer poet finds recklessness not very glorious. The Seafarer is the story of a depressed exile whose only hope for salvation is heavenly joys. Other works of wisdom poetry include a. Wulf and Eadwacer , The Wife's Lament, and The Husband's Message . During his reign, King Alfred the Great wrote a work of wisdom poetry, which is loosely based on the Neoplatonic philosophy of the late ancient scholar Boëthius and is named The Lays of Boethius .
Adaptations of Greek and Latin poetry
Several old English poems are adaptations of ancient philosophical texts . The longest is the 10th-century translation of Boëthius ' Consolation of Philosophy , which is recorded in the Cotton manuscript . Another is The Phoenix from the Exeter Book , an allegory of De ave Phoenice by Lactantius .
Other short poems are in the Latin tradition of the bestiary , e.g. B. The Panther , The Whale and The Partridge .
Christian poetry
Hagiographies
The Vercelli Book and the Exeter Book each contain two long narrative poems about the lives of different saints, so-called hagiographies . In the Vercelli Book these are Andreas and Elene , in the Exeter Book Guthlac and Juliana .
Andreas is 1722 lines long and, in terms of style and tone, most similar to Beowulf of all traditional Old English poems . The poem describes the story of Saint Andrew and the journey he made to save Saint Matthew from the mermidons .
Elene is the story of Saint Helena (mother of Emperor Constantine ) and her discovery of the cross of Jesus Christ . The worship of the cross was widespread in the Christian areas of Anglo-Saxon England and this poem was therefore of great importance.
Guthlac actually consists of two poems about the English saint Guthlac from the 7th century. Juliana is the story of the martyr Juliana of Nicomedia .
Bible transmissions
The Junius manuscript contains three transcriptions of Old Testament texts. They are not exact translations, but analogous transfers, sometimes adaptations of their own poetic quality. The first and longest is from Genesis , the other from Exodus and Daniel .
The Nowell Codex contains just after Beowulf a Bible transfer named Judith , the history of the book Judit says.
The Psalms 51-150 are preserved; they follow a prose translation of the first 50 psalms. A complete psalter may have existed , of which only the last 100 psalms have survived in poetry. The Vespasian Psalter contains an interlinear translation that was written between 820 and 850, making it probably the oldest translation into Old English. The translation has characteristics of southern English dialects; possibly it was inserted in one of the scriptoria at Canterbury or in the monastery of Minster-in-Thanet .
There are a number of verse translations of the Gloria in Excelsis , the Our Father , the Apostles' Creed, and a number of spiritual songs and proverbs .
Christian poems
In addition to the Bible translations, there are a number of own religious poems, which are mainly to be classified as poetry.
The oldest poem is probably Cædmon's hymn , a nine-liner and Cædmon's only surviving work:
Translation:
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The Exeter Book contains a series of poems that have been given the title Christian and are divided into Christ I , Christ II, and Christ III .
Considered one of the finest Old English poems, The Dream of the Rood , preserved in the Vercelli Book . It is a dream vision of Christ on the cross, where the cross is personified and speaks:
Translation:
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The dreaming decides to trust in the cross, and the dream ends with a vision of heaven.
Finally, there are also a number of poems with religious discussions. The longest is Christ and Satan in the Junius manuscript and is about the argument that Jesus had with Satan when he went into the desert for 40 days. Another example is Solomon and Saturn , which is preserved in several text fragments and in which Saturn is depicted as a magician debating with the wise King Solomon .
Proverbs, riddles and list poems
Other Old English poems are in the form of riddles , short verses, aphorisms ( gnomes ), and mnemonic poems to help you learn long lists of names. Puzzles are contained in the Exeter Book , which offers a collection of 95 puzzles for which no solutions are given and whose solutions include e.g. T. remained unknown. Some puzzles contain offensive innuendos. Short verses are often found in the margins of manuscripts. A collection of spells is known as lacnunga , with spells , incantations, and white magic . It offers practical advice such as: B. against the loss of livestock, how to deal with a dragging birth, how to deal with a swarm of bees and much more:
Translation:
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The longest saying is the Nine Herbs Charm , which is probably of pagan origin. It explains the healing powers of nine herbs.
A group of mnemonic poems is designed to make it easier to learn lists of names and things in the correct order. These poems are called Menologium , The Fates of the Apostles , The Rune Poem , The Seasons for Fasting, and Instructions for Christians .
Old English prose
Far more Old English prose has survived than poetry, v. a. Sermons and translations of religious works from Latin. The oldest preserved prose works come from the 9th century.
Christian prose
Alfred, Ælfric and Wulfstan II.
The best known Old English author was King Alfred , who translated many Latin books into Old English. These translations include: The Pastoral Care , which is Pope Gregory's pastoral letter and manual on the duties of a priest; The History of the World by Paulus Orosius , an accompanying work to De civitate Dei by Augustine of Hippo ; Consolation of Boëthius' philosophy ; the Soliloquia of Augustine and the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Beda . Although all of these works are commonly attributed to King Alfred, the style and language in each is so different that it is more likely that they were written by different people, possibly even at different times.
Ælfric Grammaticus , the abbot of Eynsham , was active as a writer in the second half of the 10th century. He was the greatest and most prolific writer of sermons in the Old English language, which were copied and adapted well into the 13th century. He also wrote some hagiographies , an Old English translation of the Regula Benedicti , pastoral letters, glossaries, translations of the first six books (the Hexateuch ) and other parts of the Bible, e.g. B. The Book of Proverbs , Wisdom and the Book of Ecclesiastes .
Active in the same area and a contemporary of Ælfrics was Wulfstan II , 1003-1023 Archbishop of York . His sermons are written in a virtuoso style. His best known work is Sermo ad Anglos ; in it he traces the Viking invasions back to the sins of the Anglo-Saxons. He wrote a number of church legal texts, including the Institutes of Polity and Canons of Edgar .
In the 10th century, an old English interlinear gloss was added to the Latin text of the Lindisfarne Gospels .
Anonymous texts
One of the oldest Old English prose texts is Martyrology , a catalog of information about saints and martyrs, arranged in the church calendar according to their annual and feast days. The work is preserved in six fragments and was probably written in the 9th century by an unknown Merzian author.
The oldest collection of sermons is the Blickling homilies in the Vercelli Book from the 10th century.
In addition to the Ælfric hagiographies, there are saints' lives of Saint Guthlac (Vercelli Book), Saint Margaret and Saint Chad . Four lives of saints are preserved in the Julius manuscript: those of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus , Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Euphrosyne and Saint Eustachius .
Ælfric's Bible translations are available alongside a large number of other translations of many parts of the Bible and apocryphal writings, e.g. B. the so-called Nicodemus Gospel , the pseudo-Matthew Gospel , the Vindicta salvatoris (another apocryphal Pilate text), the vision of St. Paul and the Apocalypse of Thomas .
The body of legal texts is one of the largest corpora in Old English. They were collected and kept by church houses. This includes many different types of text: noble gift records, wills, lists of books and relics , court hearings reports, and guild rules . All of these texts provide valuable insights into the social history of the Anglo-Saxon period, but they are also of literary value. B. can examine the reports of court hearings for their use of rhetoric .
Secular prose
Historiography and literature
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably started in the time of King Alfred and continued to record Anglo-Saxon history for over 300 years.
A single example of a romance based on the ancient pattern has survived, namely a fragment of a translation of Philostratus ' (in the year 220) biography of Apollonius of Tyana from the 11th century.
Textbooks, medical and legal works
A monk from the time of Ælfric and Wulfstan was Byrhtferth of Ramsey ; his books Handboc and Manual are studies of mathematics and rhetoric.
Ælfric wrote two scientific works, Hexameron and Interrogationes Sigewulfi , which deal with the story of creation. He also wrote a grammar and glossary of Latin in English, which were later used by Old French students as they were given interlinear glosses in Old French.
There are numerous rules and calculations for determining the holidays, and tables that can be used to predict the tides and phases of the moon.
The Nowell Codex contains the text of The Wonders of the East with a remarkable map of the world and other illustrations. Also included in the Nowell Codex is Alexander's Letter to Aristotle . Since Beowulf was also found in this manuscript , some literary scholars suspect that the Nowell Codex is a collection about exotic places and creatures.
A number of interesting works of medical literature have also come down to us. A translation of the herbarium of Pseudo-Apuleius with impressive illustrations was found together with the work Medicina de quadrupedibus, which was translated back from Old English into Latin . A second collection of texts is Bald's Leechbook , a 9th century compilation that contains instructions on herbal medicine and even surgical methods. It is seen as the counterpart to Lacnunga , as it relies less on spells than on sober advice and medical prescriptions:
Translation:
- ( Bald's Leechbook ) |
The legal texts of the Anglo-Saxons make up a large and significant part of the overall corpus. In the 12th century they were combined in two large collections (see Textus Roffensis ). They contain laws of the kings, beginning around 602/603 with those of Æthelberht I of Kent , and texts that deal with special cases and places in the country. An interesting example is Gerefa , which outlines the duties of a gerefa (a royal bailiff; cf. Graf ) on a large estate. There are also a large number of legal documents for church houses.
Reception history
With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Age of Old English ended, but Old English literature did not go away. Many sermons and other literary works continued to be read and used, in whole or in part, and further cataloged and organized into the fourteenth century. During the Reformation , when the monastic libraries were closed, antiquarians and scholars collected the manuscripts. Among them were Laurence Nowell , Matthew Parker , Robert Bruce Cotton and Humfrey Wanley .
A tradition of dictionaries and reference works for Old English literature began in the 17th century. The first was William Somner's Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum from 1659. The lexicographer Joseph Bosworth began the dictionary An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary in the 19th century , which was completed by Thomas Northcote Toller in 1898 and updated in 1972 by Alistair Campbell .
Because Old English was one of the first languages to be written after Greek and Latin, it was of particular interest to 19th century scholars looking for the roots of a European "national culture". During this time, Old English became a regular part of the linguistic curriculum at universities, especially under etymological aspects. Since the Second World War, interest in the manuscripts themselves grew; Neil Ker , a paleographer , published the landmark Catalog of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon in 1957 , and by 1980 almost all Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were in print. JRR Tolkien with his groundbreaking lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics from 1936 marked the beginning of a movement that aimed to bring Old English into the focus of literary studies .
Old English literature had and still has an impact on modern literature. Some of the best known translations are that of Beowulf by William Morris and, more recently, by Seamus Heaney , and that of The Seafarer by Ezra Pound . The influence of poetry is evident in the modern poets TS Eliot , Ezra Pound and WH Auden . Many of the topoi and much of the naming of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and many other novels reflect elements of Old English poetry.
Footnotes
- ↑ Cameron (1982). "Anglo-Saxon Literature". Dictionary of the Middle Ages . Volume 1. p. 285
- ^ Hubert Jan de Vriend: The old English medicina de quadrupedibus. Tilburg 1972.
- ↑ Part of the dictionary is available online for free today at http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm .
- ↑ One of the fictional peoples of Middle-earth (namely that of Rohan ) is similar in language and culture to the Anglo-Saxons of the 5th century, especially those in the province of Mercia , which was in the area of today's English Midlands , where Tolkien spent most of his life; See German FAQ on Tolkien
- ↑ See Lacnunga
See also
literature
- Albert Baugh & Thomas Cable (1993). A History of the English Language . ISBN 0-415-28099-0
- Joseph Bosworth (1889). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
- Alistair Campbell (1972). Englarged Addenda and Corrigenda
- Angus Cameron (1982). "Anglo-Saxon Literature". Dictionary of the Middle Ages . ISBN 0-684-16760-3
- Hans Ulrich Seeber (Ed.) (1993). English literary history . ISBN 3-476-00911-4
- Ewald Standop & Edgar Mertner (1992). English literary history . ISBN 3-494-00373-4
Web links
- An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts ( Memento of March 31, 2007 on the Internet Archive ) A free online seminar from the British Library (in English).
- Anglo-Saxon Literature , an overview text from The Columbia Encyclopedia , 6th Edition (2001) (in English).
- A Bibliography on Old English Literature ( Memento of March 2, 2006 on the Internet Archive ) (in English).
