The Anglo Saxon Literature Handbook

Mark C. Amodio

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780631226987, 9780631226970
• eBook ISBN: 9781118286500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook  presents an accessible introduction to the surviving works of prose and poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England, from AD 410-1066.

• Makes Anglo-Saxon literature accessible to modern readers
• Helps readers to overcome the linguistic, aesthetic and cultural barriers to understanding and appreciating Anglo-Saxon verse and prose
• Introduces readers to the language, politics, and religion of the Anglo-Saxon literary world
• Presents original readings of such works as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Political History

The beginnings of Anglo-Saxon England are generally traced to 449 CE, the year in which, according to Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum [Ecclesiastical History of the English People], the Germanic warrior ­brothers Hengist and Horsa led their troops across the English Channel. During the preceding four centuries, Britain had been under Roman control but in the face of growing threats to their homeland, the Romans withdrew the last of their troops from the island in 410. Soon after the Romans departed, the native Britons came under renewed attack from several northern tribes, which although unnamed are generally believed to have been the Picts and the Scots. The Britons appealed for help to the Roman forces in Gaul but when their request was refused, they mounted their own defence and successfully repulsed the invaders. Near the middle of the fifth century, Britain was again attacked from the north, and the Britons once again sought help from the continent, this time from several tribes. Bede tells us that among those who responded were members of ‘three very ­powerful Germanic tribes’ (Colgrave and Mynors, 51), the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, but other tribes, including the Frisians and the Franks, came over as well. The Germanic tribes fought successfully in the service of King Vortigern and helped quell the problems besetting Britain from the north, but the mercenaries from the ­continent were soon to pose a problem in themselves when their leader Hengist led a revolt against Vortigern, setting in motion the process by which the long-established culture of the indigenous Britons came to be supplanted by that of the ­Anglo-Saxon invaders Vortigern had invited to the island.

Although the end result was the same – Britain was once again ruled by foreign forces – the invasion undertaken by the continental tribes during what is commonly known as the Age of Migration was of a very different sort from that of the Romans several centuries earlier. During the centuries of Roman occupation, Britain remained an important and valuable colonial outpost, but it always remained precisely that: an outlying occupied territory, one they abandoned in the early fifth century. The Romans left behind many physical reminders of their occupation, any number of which remain visible to this day, but not much else because throughout the period of Roman rule, Roman and British culture remained largely separate, with the former ultimately having little impact on the latter.

Unlike the Romans, the early Germanic mercenary tribes did not simply conquer and subjugate Britain: they forever changed the island’s cultural, linguistic, and political contours by driving the native inhabitants to what will later become Wales and Ireland in the west and northwest, and by bringing their families over from the continent to settle in England’s more hospitable climate. The island is invaded twice more during the Anglo-Saxon period, first by the Vikings beginning in the late eighth century, and then most dramatically by the Normans (themselves descendants of northern tribes, as their name reveals) in the eleventh. One important difference between the invasion by the Germanic tribes and the two that follow is that the continental invaders of the fifth century did not so much intermix with the native peoples as simply displace them and their culture. This ­displacement did not come about, so far as can be determined, either because of a single, decisive event or as the result of a policy, but was rather the culmination of the very diffuse and undirected occupation of the island by the Germanic tribes. An OE word, wealh [foreigner; slave, servant], that comes down to NE as ‘Welsh’, suggests the degree to which the Germanic tribes not only displaced, but literally and figuratively marginalized the island’s indigenous Celtic peoples, for as the meanings of wealh reveal, the Britons come to be seen as strangers in their native land by the Germanic invaders. So complete was the displacement of the native Britons that very few traces of their language survived into the Anglo-Saxon period, and those that did are largely confined to a few scattered place names. Nor do many traces of the indigenous culture survive, although one of England’s most revered heroes, King Arthur, is British.

The political contours of Anglo-Saxon England are established in the early part of the period with the creation of the Heptarchy, which was ­comprised of the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent. Power is initially concentrated in Northumbria, which by the late sixth century is the political and cultural centre of England, but over the course of the following centuries, the power base in the island shifts several times. Following the period of Northumbrian supremacy in the seventh century, the seat of power shifts south to Mercia in the eighth century, before settling, and remaining, in the island’s southernmost region, Sussex, from the ninth century onward. Northumbria begins its rise to prominence during the reign of Æthelfrith (c. 593–616), and thanks largely to the efforts of Benedict Biscop (c. 628–89), who in 673 or 674 established the monastery at Monkwearmouth and in 685 established another ­monastery nearby at Jarrow, Northumbria came to house what may well have been the richest collection of books in Anglo-Saxon England. Located upon isolated sea coasts and so greatly removed from the distractions of secular life, these monasteries, as well as that of Lindisfarne to the north, were to become important centres of intellectual life throughout the eighth century. From the priory at Lindisfarne located on Holy Island off the coast of Northumbria comes the Lindisfarne Gospels, arguably one the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts to survive from the period.

The fortunes of Northumbria were to change forever in 678 when the Northumbrian king Ecgfrith lost a decisive battle against the Mercians near Trent. For a period of nearly fifty years after this battle no one kingdom established its supremacy over the others, but this was to change in 716 with the ascension in Mercia first of Æthelbald and then of Offa, who combined ruled not only Mercia but all the lands to the south for a period of nearly eighty years. The reigns of Æthelbald and Offa are noteworthy not simply for their length, but because by expanding their reach through the absorption of once-independent kingdoms, they helped pave the way for the political unification of the country that was to be the legacy of the southern ­kingdoms in the ninth century. Although the title bretwalda [ruler of Britain], which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see Part 2) rather inaccurately bestows upon Ceawlin of Wessex (560–93), Æthelbert of Kent (d. 616), Edwin of Northumbria (616–33), and several other early kings, is never applied to Æthelbald, a charter of 736 aptly labels him ‘rex Britanniae’ [king of Britain]. Following Æthelbald’s murder by a member of his own retinue in 757, Offa ascended the Mercian throne and successfully continued the program of expansion and consolidation begun under Æthelbald: precisely how Offa came to power following the civil war that followed Æthelbald’s murder is not clear, but what is clear is that he not only re-established Mercian supremacy but extended it to include the southern kingdoms of Kent, Essex, and Sussex. In addition to his domestic accomplishments, which included the building of the period’s most significant earthwork, Offa’s Dyke, the unification of much of southern England, and the establishment of a system of coinage used throughout the country with the exception of Northumbria, Offa was active in continental affairs as well. He considered himself to be the equal of the great Carolingian king, Charlemagne, and in a gesture that reveals much about the Frankish ruler’s perception of the Mercian king, Charlemagne proposed the marriage of his son Charles to one of Offa’s daughters.

Following Offa’s death in 796, Coenwulf ascended to the Mercian throne and for a time succeeded in maintaining Mercian power in the south, but following his death in 821, Mercia’s fortunes begin a precipitous decline and by 829 the entire kingdom of Mercia comes under the domination of the West Saxon Ecgberht. Because Ecgberht was also acknowledged as overlord by the Northumbrians, for the first time in its history the lineaments of an England unified under a single ruler can be traced: earlier kings had claimed for themselves authority over the entire country, but it is only with the rise of the West Saxon dynasty at the beginning of the ninth century that such a claim accurately begins to reflect the political reality. Ecgberht’s power does not extend far beyond the borders of his kingdom for nearly twenty years, but when he does directly challenge the Mercians, he does so as a king nearly as powerful as Offa.

The West Saxon dynasty of which Ecgberht was part would rise to a ­position of unrivalled power in England during the late eighth and early ninth centuries, but it was also during this period that England was for the first time in several centuries faced with a powerful external threat: that of the Vikings. Beginning with the sacking of the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793, an event dramatically recounted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Vikings were to play a critically important role in shaping the history of England throughout the remainder of the Anglo-Saxon period. In plundering many monasteries during their raids of the eighth and ninth centuries, the Vikings struck a severe blow to the very heart of secular and ecclesiastical learning in England because even though the monastic communities were small and isolated, they were nevertheless early Anglo-Saxon England’s most important intellectual and cultural centres.

As devastating as the attacks in the late eighth and early ninth century were, they were for the most part isolated raids conducted by men who ­afterwards returned to their homeland with their newly acquired treasures. But in the latter half of the ninth century, the nature and purpose of the Viking raids would change with the arrival in East Anglia in 865 of what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls the ‘micel here’ [great army] of Vikings Several things set this group apart from the raiding parties that had been sporadically harrying English coastal settlements and monasteries over the preceding seventy or so years. Even allowing for some typical exaggeration in the reporting of its size, the ‘micel here’ was by far the largest group to land on the island, and it appears to have been composed of members of a number of different Scandinavian tribes. The aim and tactics of these Vikings differed sharply from those of the earlier raiders as well: the great army came ­prepared for a long, land-based campaign in England and began to proceed systematically through the country, heading first to Northumbria and then to East Anglia. In short, where their predecessors had engaged in what we may consider smash-grab-and-run skirmishes, the great army of 865 arrived as invaders who did not just strip England of its wealth, but occupied it.

The Danes’ policy of controlling the lands they harried by installing English kings sympathetic to them met with mixed success: they were ­unable to do so in the powerful kingdom of Wessex and the king they established in Northumbria in 867, Egbert, was forced into exile in 872 and replaced by another Englishman, Ricsige, who remained independent for several years. In Mercia, the Danish invaders met with more success: they established Ceolwulf as king in 874, with the understanding that he would turn the land over to them when they asked for it. After fighting throughout the country as a single unit for nearly a decade, the great army split into two units, with Halfdan turning his attention to the North, and Guthrum seeking, unsuccessfully, to extend Danish control into Wessex before occupying East Anglia. The army was never to reunite. Guthrum’s defeat in Wessex came at the hands of Alfred the Great, who also re-established English control over London in 886 and who came to be seen, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as the ‘cyning ofer eall Ongelcyn butan ðæm dæle þe under Dena onwalde wæs’ [king over all the English race except that ­portion who were under Danish power]. What the chronicler fails to note is that the area under Danish control, known as the Danelaw, encompassed not only the entirety of East Anglia, but stretched from the eastern half of Anglo-Saxon Mercia as far north as Northumbria, as far south as the Thames, and as far east as Watling Street.

Following Alfred’s death in 899, his son Edward the Elder embarked, along with his wife, Æthelflæd, upon a series of campaigns in which they succeeded in reasserting English rule throughout the Danelaw. Edward’s military success reached its height in 920, four years before his death, when the king of the Scots, the Danish ruler of York, and the ruler of English Northumbria all submitted to his authority, thus securing Edward’s position as the most powerful man in the entire land. Within several years of Edward’s death, his son Æthelstan had pushed the borders established by his father some eighty miles north, so that the kingdom of England now encompassed not only the city of York but all of Lancashire and Westmorland. The first period of the Danish invasions comes to a close with the expulsion in 954 of Eric Bloodaxe, who in 947 had been named king of York.

Although the Vikings both those living in England and those voyaging from and then returning to Scandinavia, remained a constant threat throughout the first eighty years of the tenth century, the nature and scope of their threat did not approach that of their late-ninth-century predecessors and, as a result, England enjoyed a period of relative peace under the powerful Alfredian West Saxon dynasty. This peace was, however, to be shattered beginning in 980 by the second wave of Viking attacks. Whereas the first wave of Danish invasions resulted in the Danes ruling a large portion of England, the second wave, which like the first began with a series of attacks led by small raiding parties that plundered and departed before meeting anything other than local resistance, culminated in 1013 with King Æthelræd’s flight to Normandy and the acceptance by the English of a Dane, Swein Forkbeard, as King of England. Following Swein’s death a few months after his accession, Æthelræd regrouped and returned to England where he drove Swein’s son Cnut from England and regained the throne. In 1016, Cnut returned with a formidable army and soon gained control over most of the country, including Wessex. While preparing for the defence of London in 1016, Æthelræd died, and his son Edmund Ironside was accepted as king by the English. Over the course of the next few months, Edmund raised a spirited but unsuccessful defence against Cnut, whose rule the English had by then already widely accepted. An agreement between Cnut and Edmund that same year set the amount that Edmund would have to pay Cnut’s army to secure peace and also divided the country, giving control of Wessex to Edmund and of the rest of the country to Cnut. Following Edmund’s death in November 1016, England was to be ruled by Danish kings until 1042, when once again a member of the West Saxon royal line, Edward the Confessor, came to power following the death of Cnut’s son Harthacnut.

Cnut’s reign (1016–35) was marked both by political stability and ­economic prosperity. It is during this period that England became, along with Denmark and Norway, part of a northern empire briefly ruled by Cnut. Yet even before Cnut’s death, his grip on Norway had begun to weaken, and, following his death, internal and external forces would soon loosen forever the Danish hold on the throne of England. Pressure on the Danish throne kept Harthacnut, Cnut’s legitimate son by Emma (Æthelræd’s ­second wife), from immediately claiming the English throne following his father’s death, and during the unsettled time that followed, Cnut’s illegitimate son Harold was made regent before eventually being elected king. Harold’s death from an illness in 1040 allowed Harthacnut to claim his English inheritance without bloodshed but his time on the throne was short: in 1042 he died unexpectedly while attending the wedding feast of one of his father’s retainers. Harthacnut’s half-brother, Edward the Confessor, the elder of Æthelræd and Emma’s two sons, was elected king in London in 1042 and in him the West Saxon dynasty of Edward the Elder and Alfred the Great once again returned to power. But while Edward’s birthright to the throne was universally acknowledged, the powerful earls who accepted him as king, including the Englishmen Godwine (d. 1053), Earl of Wessex, and Leofric (d. 1057), Earl of Mercia, as well as the Dane Siward (d. 1055), Earl of Northumbria, had all come to power under Cnut and so had no strong connection to or even affection for the West Saxon dynasty. Following Edward’s death in early 1066, the English throne passed to Earl Godwine’s son Harold. In the latter part of Edward’s reign, Harold had risen to become Edward’s most powerful subject and following his repulsion of King Gruffydd of Wales in 1063 (the Welsh had begun attacking England in 1055), he became more powerful than any other of Edward’s subjects.

Although not a descendant of any English royal line, Harold was chosen over Edward’s nephew, Edgar the Ætheling, but his reign was to be short, extending only from 6 January to 14 October 1066. During this period he successfully repelled a threat from Norway but then succumbed to one from Normandy. Harold’s trouble began in May when his brother Tostig, the exiled earl of Northumbria, returned with an armed force and occupied Sandwich. His fleet of perhaps sixty ships sailed to the Humber, but there he suffered a defeat that caused him to retreat to Scotland, where he awaited the arrival of the Norwegian claimant to the throne, Harold of Norway. The Norwegians were victorious at the battle of Fulford on 20 September, but fell just five days later to Harold Godwinson’s forces at the battle of Stamford Bridge, in which both Harold of Norway and Tostig were killed. So complete was the English victory that only twenty-four of the Norwegian’s fleet of 300 ships were required to carry the survivors back to Norway. Harold’s victory was to be short-lived, though, as within days of his victory in the northeast, William of Normandy set sail for England to exercise what is seen by many as his thin claim on the English crown, a claim grounded in his being the great-nephew of Queen Emma, sister of the Norman Duke Richard II. Following the landing of William and his forces in Pevensey in the southwest on 28 September, Harold headed south with all dispatch, his troops covering the 190 miles from York to London in nine days. While he arrived at the city with a force that was considerably larger than the one with which he had faced Harold of Norway, i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Literature Handbooks
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on the Text
• List of Abbreviations
• Part 1: Anglo-Saxon England: Backgrounds and Beginnings
• Part 2: Anglo-Saxon Prose
• Part 3: Anglo-Saxon Poetry
• Part 4: Critical Approaches
• Part 5: Themes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Manuscripts