Anglo-Saxon Literature

Little remains from heathen times, or from the period before 449, when the Angles and Saxons cro ed from the continent to England. When Augustine came to introduce Christianity among them, in 596, a desire to cultivate a literature arose. The runes and tablets of beech were abandoned for the letters and writing materials used in Europe. The kingdom of We ex and that of Nor thumb ria were the principal centers of literary development. In the former the great monasteries of Winchester, Malmesbury, and Glastonbury were seats of learning. St. Aldhelm (d. 709) is claimed to have written a poem Andreas . Cynewulf (perhaps of the 8th century) wrote Crist , a religious poem on the Incarnation; Elene, which told the story of the discovery of the true Cro at Jerusalem by the empre Helena; and Julian a , a biography of a saint. Beowulf , an epic upon a Swedish hero, is the most important of Anglo-Saxon remains. Formerly dated variously from the 5th to the 11th century, it is now generally a igned to the 8th. King Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon Beda's Ch. History, Orosius's Universal History , and works of Pope Gregory and Boethius. Nor thumb ria produced Adannan and Caedmon, whose Para phrase of Bible History is extant. The venerable Beda (d. 735) was a famous scholar and composed many works, prose and verse, in Latin; and Alcuin, who followed him by half a century, was summoned by Charlemagne to his court and died there 804. Like Beda, he wrote in Latin. The Durham Gos pels , in an Angle dialect, and the Homilies of Aelfric, Abp. of Canterbury (d. 1006), are the last Saxon works of importance. In the transition or Semi-Saxon period the most celebrated works remaining are the Ormulum , the Brut of Layamon, and the Ancren Riwle .