World Literature - English Literatures

The oldest literature known as English was written in a Germanic language called Anglo-Saxon; later a kind of French called Anglo-Norman was used for literary purposes by the aristocracy, while the older Anglo-Saxon, mixed with many words from Norman-French was used by the lower classes; and throughout the early history of England – indeed, for more than a thousand years – Latin was used for composing serious and dignified literature.

The longest and best of the Anglo-Saxon pagan poems is Beowulf (ba’o woolf).

Beowulf, the national epic of the Anglo-Saxons, tells how a great national hero, Beowulf, slew monsters in defense of his fellow men and lived a life of honesty and nobility till he fell a victim to the rage of a fire-breathing dragon.

Christianity was first brought to Britain by Roman soldiers and flourished during the Roan occupation. When Christian missionaries finally came to Britain, they arrived from two directions, - from Ireland and Rome.

In 563 A.D. the greatest Irish statesman and preacher Saint Columba, or Columbkille (kol’um kil), founded the monastery of Iona on a little island off the west coast of Scotland.

In 597 A.D. another great missionary, Saint Augustine, landed in the south of England. He founded a church near the post where the great cathedral of Canterbury now stands. From this center the new religion spread northward until it met that of the Irish missionaries who had come down from Iona.

Under the Norman kings, especially Henry I and Henry II, there came into being the institution known as chivalry. A kind of rude sense of honor and respect for women and religion had existed among the Anglo-Saxons, but it was not until the twelfth century that these social and moral forces were organized into a fixed and elaborate set of rules and regulations. The knight of the period after the Conquest was expected to be always read y to fight for God and his overlord, and to defend his lady’s honor with his life. Thus chivalry was closely connected with feudal obligations, with the Church, and with social relations between men and women. The romances of the Middle Ages and many of modern times, such as Sir Walter Scott’s, depend largely for their charm upon their use of chivalry.

Though the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons were completely united into one people only after much bloodshed, cruelty, and hard feeling, the general tone of literature after the Conquest was far more cheerful than it had even been before. Not until after the Conquest did English literature begin to show those traits suggested by them “merry,” that is, pleasant as well as happy. When we speak of “Merry-England,” we are not thinking of the gloomy life described in Anglo-Saxon literature but the England depicted in the literature of chivalry, in the ballads of Robin Hood, in charming little poems about spring and love, and in Chaucer.

During the fifteenth century a great change began to take place in the life of England. This change had begun about a century before in Italy and had swept over the whole of civilized Europe. People found the world more beautiful and life richer in joy than ever before. They reached out in all directions for new experiences and new knowledge. So complete and profound was this change from the medieval to the modern world that the new awakening is called the Renaissance (new birth). The gradual broadening of human knowledge during the Renaissance is often referred to as the Revival of Learning.

In England the Renaissance includes roughly the years from 1400 till the death of Shakespeare, in 1616. The latter half of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century are especially important I the history of the English Renaissance, because during these years the Great Queen Elizabeth occupied the English throne (1558-1603) and Shakespeare (1564-1616) composed his immortal dramas.

Elizabeth lyric poetry was composed in many forms, the most important of which is the sonnet.

John Milton, next to Shakespeare and possibly Chaucer the greatest of English poets, is the crowning glory of the period. He has been called the port of Puritanism, but, like all other great geniuses, he is not typical of his age. He wrote both in prose and in verse and his works include most of the literary types popular at the time; but his ideas and his style are in general far above those of his contemporaries. His Paradise Lost is the greatest religious epic in the English language.

The Victorian Period in the nineteenth century produced two of our greater English poets – Browning and Tennyson – as well as a host of lesser writers who found poetic material in a greater variety of subjects than any of their predecessors. Poetry dealt not only with nature and the past – two stock themes of Romanticists – but poets succeeded in getting inspiration even out of astronomy, evolution, and problems of capitalism and labor. Tennyson was particularly fond of introducing into his poetry references to scientific discoveries and other matters interesting to the people of his day. Though some later Victorian writers were pessimistic regarding society, most of the greater writers leave us, as Browning does, with a larger sympathy for our fellow man and a stronger help for the future.