Editing Anglo-Saxons (section)

=== Literature ===
{{Main|Anglo-Saxon literature}}
[[File:Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|First page of the fire-damaged epic ''[[Beowulf]]'']]
Old English literary works include genres such as [[epic poem|epic poetry]], [[hagiography]], [[sermon]]s, [[Old English Bible translations|Bible translations]], legal works, [[chronicle]]s, [[Anglo-Saxon riddles|riddles]] and others. In all there are about 400 surviving [[manuscript]]s from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. The manuscripts use a modified [[Roman alphabet]], but [[Anglo-Saxon runes]] or ''futhorc'' are used in under 200 inscriptions on objects, sometimes mixed with Roman letters.

This literature is remarkable for being in the vernacular (Old English) in the early medieval period: almost all other written literature in Western Europe was in Latin at this time, but because of Alfred's programme of vernacular literacy, the oral traditions of Anglo-Saxon England ended up being converted into writing and preserved. Much of this preservation can be attributed to the monks of the tenth century, who made – at the very least – the copies of most of the literary manuscripts that still exist. Manuscripts were not common items. They were expensive and hard to make.<ref>Karkov, Catherine E. The Art of Anglo-Saxon England. Vol. 1. Boydell Press, 2011.</ref> First, cows or sheep had to be slaughtered and their skins tanned. The leather was then scraped, stretched, and cut into sheets, which were sewn into books. Then inks had to be made from oak galls and other ingredients, and the books had to be hand written by monks using quill pens. Every manuscript is slightly different from another, even if they are copies of each other, because every scribe had different handwriting and made different errors. Individual scribes can sometimes be identified from their handwriting, and different [[paleography|styles of hand]] were used in specific [[scriptoria]] (centres of manuscript production), so the location of the manuscript production can often be identified.<ref>Fulk, R. D., and Christopher M. Cain. "Making Old English New: Anglo-Saxonism and the Cultural Work of Old English Literature." (2013).</ref>

There are four great poetic codices of [[Old English poetry]] (a [[codex]] is a book in modern format, as opposed to a [[scroll]]): the [[Junius Manuscript]], the [[Vercelli Book]], the [[Exeter Book]], and the [[Nowell Codex]] or ''Beowulf'' Manuscript; most of the well-known lyric poems such as ''[[The Wanderer (Old English poem)|The Wanderer]]'', ''[[The Seafarer (poem)|The Seafarer]]'', ''[[Deor]]'' and ''[[The Ruin]]'' are found in the Exeter Book, while the Vercelli Book has the ''[[Dream of the Rood]]'',<ref>Godden, Malcolm, and Michael Lapidge, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1991; there is also the Paris Psalter (not the [[Paris Psalter]]), a metrical version of most of the [[Psalms]], described by its most recent specialist as "a pedestrian and unimaginative piece of poetic translation. It is rarely read by students of Old English, and most Anglo-Saxonists make only passing reference to it. There is scarcely any literary criticism written on the text, although some work has been done on its vocabulary and metre", [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=A6553EFEF5479C1641CC3FEF8221A280.journals?fromPage=online&aid=2312048 "Poetic language and the Paris Psalter: the decay of the Old English tradition", by M. S. Griffith], ''Anglo-Saxon England'', Volume 20, December 1991, pp 167–186, {{doi|10.1017/S0263675100001800}}</ref> some of which is also carved on the [[Ruthwell Cross]]. The [[Franks Casket]] also has carved riddles, a popular form with the Anglo-Saxons. Old English secular poetry is mostly characterized by a somewhat gloomy and introspective cast of mind, and the grim determination found in ''[[The Battle of Maldon]]'', recounting an [[Battle of Maldon|action against the Vikings in 991]]. This is from a book that was lost in the [[Cotton Library]] fire of 1731, but it had been transcribed previously.

Rather than being organized around rhyme, the poetic line in Anglo-Saxon is organised around alliteration, the repetition of stressed sounds; any repeated stressed sound, vowel or consonant, could be used. Anglo-Saxon lines are made up of two half-lines (in old-fashioned scholarship, these are called [[hemistich]]es) divided by a breath-pause or [[caesura]]. There must be at least one of the alliterating sounds on each side of the caesura.
{{blockquote|''<u>hr</u>eran mid hondum{{spaces|4}}<u>hr</u>imcealde sæ''{{efn|Example from the Wanderer<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Wdr&textOnly=true|title=Early-Medieval-England.net : The Wanderer|website=www.anglo-saxons.net}}</ref>}}}}
The line above illustrates the principle: note that there is a natural pause after 'hondum' and that the first stressed syllable after that pause begins with the same sound as a stressed line from the first half-line (the first halfline is called the a-verse and the second is the b-verse).<ref>Bradley, S.A.J. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. New York: Everyman Paperbacks, 1995.</ref>

There is very strong evidence that Anglo-Saxon poetry has deep roots in oral tradition, but keeping with the cultural practices seen elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon culture, there was a blending between tradition and new learning.<ref>Alexander, Michael. The Earliest English Poems. 3rd rev. ed. New York:
Penguin Classics, 1992.</ref> Thus while all Old English poetry has common features, three strands can be identified: religious poetry, which includes poems about specifically Christian topics, such as the cross and the saints; Heroic or [[epic poetry]], such as ''Beowulf'', which is about heroes, warfare, monsters, and the Germanic past; and poetry about "smaller" topics, including introspective poems (the so-called elegies), "wisdom" poems (which communicate both traditional and Christian wisdom), and riddles. For a long time all Anglo-Saxon poetry was divided into three groups: [[Cædmon]]ian (the biblical paraphrase poems), heroic, and "Cynewulfian", named after [[Cynewulf]], one of the few named poets in Anglo-Saxon. The most famous works from this period include the epic poem ''[[Beowulf]]'', which has achieved [[national epic]] status in Britain.<ref>Anglo Saxon Poetry. Hachette UK, 2012.</ref>

There are about 30,000 surviving lines of Old English poetry and about ten times that much prose, and the majority of both is religious. The prose was influential and obviously very important to the Anglo-Saxons and more important than the poetry to those who came after the Anglo-Saxons. [[Homily|Homilies]] are sermons, lessons to be given on moral and doctrinal matters, and the two most prolific and respected writers of Anglo-Saxon prose, [[Ælfric of Eynsham|Ælfric]] and [[Wulfstan the Cantor|Wulfstan]], were both homilists.<ref>Sweet, Henry. An Anglo-Saxon reader in prose and verse: with grammar, metre, notes and glossary. At the Clarendon Press, 1908.</ref> Almost all surviving poetry is found in only one manuscript copy, but there are several versions of some prose works, especially the ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]'', which was apparently promulgated to monasteries by the royal court. Anglo-Saxon clergy also continued to write in Latin, the language of Bede's works, monastic chronicles, and theological writing, although Bede's biographer records that he was familiar with Old English poetry and gives a five line lyric which he either wrote or liked to quote – the sense is unclear.