ESSAY CEMETERY

Anglo-Saxon England saw over two hundred years of Viking attacks at the turn of the first millennium. By the end of the tenth century, Anglo-Saxon England had become Anglo-Scandinavian England (Frank 23). The Scandinavian presence in England is the subject of much Early Medieval poetry, prose and historical literature. The Danes, a geographically foreign and pagan people, emerge as an Other against which the Anglo-Saxons struggle to maintain their ideological integrity. In the poem “The Battle of Maldon” the warfare waged against the Vikings exposes weakness within the ranks of the English. In the “Life of St. Edmund”, an Anglo-Saxon defeat in a battle against the Vikings gives rise to a saint who works miracles from beyond the grave. Even though both texts were written within decades of one another, the recentness of the events depicted and the thematic focus of their authors result in two very different treatments of a similar historical setting. Ælfric’s “Life of St. Edmund” is an e...

"Deor", an Old English poem found in the tenth-century poetry collection The Book of Exeter, is generally considered to be a song of lament for the poet's own misfortune. The poem consists of a series of seven stanzas that describe the travails of well-known historical individuals and groups. As the final stanza contains an account of the ostensible poet's own misfortune – being removed from his position as court poet – scholars have conjectured that the poet's aim in depicting these historical travails is to compare these with his own fate. However, the final stanza does not constitute the poem's final words. The poem ends with the refrain that recurs after every stanzaic description of misfortune in the work – "Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!" – "that passed over, this can too". The placement of the refrain after the final stanza indicates that, just like the other historical hardships, the poet's grief over his demotion, too, has passe...

Beowulf is an epic poem that relates the adventures of an Anglo-Saxon hero, composed to be recited in England in the early 8 th century. It was put into manuscript form, in Old English, in the late 10 th century, and the only surviving manuscript was partially destroyed by fire in 1731. Though the text as it was originally related is not available to us today, the many hands through which it passed and the numerous reincarnations thereof make this poem an invaluable tool. Through inferences about the changes made to the text as it changed hands, we may gain insight into the cultural values and religious beliefs prevalent in early Medieval Britain. The poem relates events that took place two centuries prior to its composition. It centers around two south Scandinavian tribes, the Danes and the Geats. The original audience of Beowulf, that of its oral incarnation, probably considered themselves descendents of the Geats (of whom Beowulf derived). Thus, much in the manner that the Aen...