Old English Prose: From Alfred to Beowulf
Old English Prose
The Anglo-Saxon invaders brought with them their own poetry, but there’s no evidence of their having any literary prose tradition. The development of Old English prose took place mainly in England and mainly as a result of the Christianization of England.
King Alfred
We can say that English prose begins with King Alfred because he wanted to bring to the people the most significant aspects of earlier thought (Latin, Greek, etc.). He was very much concerned with culture and carried out a very important translating project which has been crucial for the history of English education and literature.
CURA PASTORALIS
This was a work by Pope Gregory the Great, and here he tells about his concern about the lack of scholars in England in the year 871 and also about the destruction of churches and books by the Danes. He was very much surprised that previous scholars hadn’t translated any of these books into the vernacular language. He realized that Christian culture has its roots in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew sources and it had to be translated into English. This work describes the duties and responsibilities of a bishop and became a manual of the priest’s duties.
HISTORIAE ADVERSUM PAGANOS
The original writer was Paulus Orosius, and he tried to demonstrate that the introduction of Christianity has not made the world worse than it was before. It was not a good book and Alfred did a free translation, and he included two stories about voyagers that gave this translation its value. Alfred supported the Venerable Bede to do the translation Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
The original writer was Boethius. This became a very popular work in the Middle Ages and it deals with the fundamental problems of God’s government of the world.
LAWS
Laws are an important step in the development of English prose.
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE
This is a series of annals which start with an outline of English history from the arrival of the first Roman invaders to the middle of the 5th century and continues until the year 1154. It consists of 7 manuscripts and it was probably begun during King Alfred’s time. The last entry we have is from the year 1154. By this time English had developed from what we call Anglo-Saxon or Old English into Middle English.
Ælfric
He was a scholar of the Benedictine Reformation of the 10th century. His works were THE CATHOLIC HOMILIES and LIVES OF THE SAINTS. In them, he shows a careful balance of prose rhythm and content.
Wulfstan
He was Archbishop of York. He developed a type of eloquent writing that distinguished him from Ælfric. He shows great passion in his writings.
THE SERMON TO THE ENGLISH
He paints a vivid picture of the horrors caused by the Danish invasions.
BEOWULF
It is the German equivalent to La Chanson de Roland and El Cantar de Mío Cid, so we can consider it as one of the greatest Western epics.
It belongs to the first part of the 8th century, but the action takes place in the 5th and the 6th centuries. It’s the longest surviving poem in Old English (3182 lines). These lines are divided into an introduction and 43 sections called fitts.
It is anonymous. It’s written in the unrhymed four-beat alliterative meter. It shows a mixture of fantasy and reality, so you can study it at two levels:
- The level of action (magic swords, creatures, etc.)
- The level of facts. It is more accurate because the dates about facts included in the poem coincide with archaeological evidence and later written sources.
The poet’s activity was to tie words together. He would tie pairs of half lines together by their stressed alliteration, often with some additional semantic or syntactic connection between the stressed words.
- Eorl/Ellen (noble/courage)
- Hâlig/heofon (holy/heaven)
- Dryhten/duguä (lord/troop)
- Fyren/fçond (sin/enemy)
We find a lot of synonyms in Beowulf. For example, there are 50 different words to mean king, and many of these words are compounds. This is used to raise the concept to an epic level.
In making compounds he also does kenning and variations.
A kenning is a descriptive name or poetical periphrasis:
- Helm-berend = the helmet-bearing one = WARRIOR
- Hron-râd = the whale’s pasture = SEA
- Hilde-lçoma = battle-flame = SWORD
The variation has been called the very soul of Old English poetry and it is highly developed in Beowulf. It’s basically a repetition of a concept or term and in each repetition, he adds more information to the concept.
I did heroic deeds, risked my life, performed glorious feats
This is important because if we are talking about a poetry that depends on formulas, then there would be a strong artistic procedure to vary the formulas. It’s not only ornamentation.
The syntactic frame to include variations is the parataxis.
Litotes is a type of verbal irony which consists of a deliberate understatement.