Anglo-Saxon

• Great Britain is the official collective name of England, Scotland, Wales, and their associated islands
• London is the capital of the United Kingdom
• England is almost synonymous with the island of Great Britain, which consists of Scotland, Wales, England, and the entire United Kingdom
• Principal divisions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

  • England
  • Scotland
  • Wales
• English Literature includes works produced in England, including those of Irish and Scottish authors closely identified with English life and literature
• The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded Britain during the 5th century AD, forming the people known as the "English"
• England occupies all of the islands east of Wales and south of Scotland
• Anglo-Saxon


  People during the early times in England, made up of Germanic tribes
• England is the predominant constituent unit of the United Kingdom, occupying more than half of the island of Great Britain
• England no longer exists as a governmental or political unit
• England's history begins with the Anglo-Saxons
• United Kingdom includes everything in Great Britain plus Northern Ireland
• The United Kingdom has a government with a Prime Minister
• England used to be called Angleland
• The term "England" was derived from the Angles, who occupied a region in Germany
• English Literature began in the era of bards and "gleemen"
• Famous English Literature

  • KING ARTHUR - Arthurian legends
  • CANTERBURY TALES - Masterpiece of Geoffrey Chaucer
  • ROMEO AND JULIET - A tragedy
  • DOCTOR FAUSTUS - A tragedy by Christopher Marlowe
  • PARADISE LOST - John Milton
  • PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - A social novel by Jane Austin
• Paradise

  • Heaven
  • Eden
• English Literature
• The Angles and Saxons had no written language after the Roman withdrawal
• Bards


  1. Composers and declamers of epics

  2. Singers tasked on transmission of stories during their travels
• The Angles and Saxons ceased to be pirates and became settlers in England, influenced by Christianity
• Old English or Anglo-Saxon Period


  C. 450-1066
• Anglo-Saxons were fierce, warlike, and pagan invaders who later became Christianized
• Poetry

  • Characteristics: Bold and strong, mournful and elegiac, emphasis on sorrow and futility of life, composed without rhyme, with structural alliteration
• Coedman (650-680) was the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon Christian Poets, known for Coedman’s Hymn
• Aelfric (950-1020) wrote “Catholic Homilies and Lives of the Saints”
• Prose included a collection of laws, religious works, and peak of monastic scholarship
• English Literature includes


  • Literature produced in England
  • Works of Irish and Scottish authors closely identified with English life and literature letters
• Northumbria was the seat of learning in Old English Northern Humber, an important kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England
• Pride and Prejudice is a social novel by Jane Austen
• Gleemen


  1. Minstrels; traveling musicians, entertainers

  2. Accompanied the Angles and Saxons during their travels, singing tales of the North land or their origins
• Germanic is a European language group originating from Germany, the basis of Old English (The Basis of Modern English)
• Germanic tribes brought the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Language and a specific poetic tradition
• Poetry

  • “The Wanderer and the Seafarer”
• Literature was written in monasteries during the civilization period
• King Alfred the Great's old English translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boethius was in the 9th century
• Saint Bede the Venerable (673-735) was an English Benedictine monk and scholar known for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• Saint Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• Works of Coedman

  • Grammatical and "scientific", scriptural commentary; historical and biographical