Old English Poetry

1.Among the earliest textual insertions in Old English are the peaces of Old English poetry. They are to be found in “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” written in Latin in the 8^th c. by Bede the Venerable, an English monk. These two pieces are: 5 lines know as “Bede’s Death Song”; 9 lines of a religious poem “Cædmon’s Hymn”.

2.All in all we have about 30 000 lines of OE verse from many poets, but most of them are unknown. The two best known Old English poets are Cædmon and Cynewulf (Northumbrian authors).

3.The topics of Old English poetry:

· heroic epic(“Beowulf”, the oldest in the Germanic literature, 7^th c., was written in Mercian or Northumbrian but has come down to us only in a 10^th c. West Saxon copy. It is based on old legends about the tribal life of the ancient Teutons and features the adventures and fights of the legendary heroes);

· lyrical poems(“The Wanderer”, “The Seafarer”, etc. Most of the poems are ascribed to Cynewulf);

· religious poems(“Fate of the Apostles” (probably Cædmon), “Dream of the Rood”, etc.).

4.The peculiarities of Old English poetry:

· written in Old Germanic alliterative verse:

- the lines are not rhymed;

- the number of the syllables in a line is free;

- the number of stressed syllables in a line is fixes;

- the line is usually divided into 2 halves, each half starts with one and the same sound;

· a great number of synonyms (e.g. beorn, secζ, ζuma, wer were all the synonyms of “man”) and kennings metaphorical phrases or compounds describing the qualities or functions of a thing in which the 1^st element provides the clue to the riddle of the 2^nd element(e.g. hronrād “whale-road” (for “sea”); bānhūs “bone-house” (for “a person’s body”); hēaþu-swāt “war-sweat” (for “blood”)).

Main Written Records of the Middle English Period

Geoffrey Chaucer and His Contribution

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most prominent authors of the Middle English Period and he set up a language pattern to be followed. He is considered to be the founder of the literary language of that period. Most authors of the Middle English Period tried to fallow this standard.

Features of the Chaucer’s Language:

· Chaucer’s Language was the basis for the national literary language (15^th – 16^th c.).

· New spelling rules (digraphs) and new rules of reading (1 letter = several sounds) appeared as compared to the Old English.

· New grammatical forms appeared (Perfect forms, Passive forms, “to” Infinitive constructions, etc.).

· Chaucer tried to minimize the number of the French loans in the English Language.

· Chaucer introduced rhyme to the poetry.