Anglo Saxon Period

Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses literature written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English) during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.

Some of the most important works from this period include the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of early English history. The poem Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century is one of the oldest surviving written texts in English.

Anglo-Saxon literature has gone through different periods of research—in the 19th and early 20th centuries the focus was on the Germanic roots of English, later the literary merits were examined, and today the interest is with paleography questions and the physical manuscripts themselves such as dating, place of origin, authorship, and looking at the connections between Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Characteristics

Expressionism.

Elements of style: rhythm and tone

Elegiac poetry, heroic poetry

Authors:

Most of them are anonymous. Caedmon, Bede, Alfred, and Cynewulf.