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History of English Poetry

ASTIKA WEBTECH July 20, 2021

 History of  English Poetry


The earliest English poetry: 

                                      

Anglo-Saxon Poetry: 

                                  
Beowulf


    



Beowulf, The epic of Beowulf, the most precious relic of old English, and, instead, of all early Germanic literature, has come down to us in a single ms ., written about a .d. 1000, which contains ALSO THE OLD ENGLISH POEM OF JUDITH, AND IS BOUND UP, WITH OTHER MSS. IN   VOLUME IN THE COTTONIAN COLLECTION NOW  at the  British  museum .the subject of theorem is the exploit s of Beowulf , son of ecgthew and nan nephew of hygelac ,ig of the “gates , ” i.e. the people, called in Scandinavian records gauter, from whom a part of southern  Sweden  has received  its present name Gotland.  


Anglo-Saxon Poetry




 



                                        The Story 

  • The following is a brief outline of the story, which naturally divides itself into five parts.

  • 1. Beowulf, with fourteen companion,ns, sails to Denmark, to offer his help to Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose hall (called “Heorot”) has for twelve years been rendered uninhabitable by the reverses of a devouring monster (apparently in gigantic human shape) called Grendel, a dwellers in the waste, who used nightly to force an entrance and slaughter some of the inmates. Beowulf and his friends are feasted in the long-designed Heoraot. At night the Daneswithdraw, leaving the strangers alone. When all but Beowulf are asleep, Grendal enters, the iron-barred doors having yielded in a moment to his hand. One of Beowulf are friends is killed; but Beowulf, unarmed, wrestles with the monster, and tears his arm from the shoulder. Grendel, though mortality wounded, breaks from the conqueror’s grasp, and escape from the hall. On the morthe row, his bloodstained track is followed until it ends in a distant mere.

  • 2. All fear being now removed, the Danish king and his followers pass the night in Herriot, Beowulf and his comrades being lodged elsewhere. The hall is invaded by Grendel’s mother. Who kills carries off one of the Danish nobles. Beowulf proceeds to the mere, and, armed with sword and corslet, plunges into the water. In the vault he finds the corpse of Grendel; he cuts off the head and brings it back in triumph.

  • 3. Richly rewarded by Heogther, Beowulf returns to his native land. He is welcomed by Hygelac, and relates to him the story of his adventures, with some details not contained in the former narrative. The king bestows on him lands and honors, and during the regions of Hygelac and his son Heardred he is the greatest man in the kingdom. When Heardred is killed in battle with the  Swedes, Beowulf becomes king in his stead.

  • 4. After Beowulf has reigned prosperously for fifty years, his country is ravaged by a fiery dragon, which inhabits an ancient burial-mound, full of costly treasure. The royal hall itself is burned to the ground. The aged king resolves to fight, unaided, with the dragon. Accompanied by eleven chosen warriors, he journeys to the borrow. Bidding his companions retire to a distance, he takes up his position near the entrance to the mound – an arched opening whence issues a boiling stream.   


  •  The dragon hears Beowulf 's shout of defiance, and rushes forth, breathing flames. The fight begins; Beowulf is all but overpowered, and the sight is so terrible that his men, all but one, seek safety in flight.

  • The young Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, though yet untried in battle, cannot, even in obedience to his lord’s prohibition, refrain from going to his help. With Wiglaf’s aid, Beowulf slays the Dragon, but not before he has received his own death-wound. Wiglaf enters the barrow and returns to show the dying king the treasures that he has found there. With his last breath , Beowulf names Wiglaf his successor, and ordains that his ashes shall be enshrined in a great mound, placed on a lofty cliff, so that it may be a mark for sailors for out at sea.

  • 5. The news Beowulf’s dear-bought victory is carried to the army. Amid great lamentation, the hero’s body is laid on the funeral pile and consumed. The treasures of the dragons heard are buried with his ashes; and when the great mound is finished, twelve of Beowulf’s most famous warriors ride around it, celebrating the praises of the bravest, gentlest and most generous of kings.   

     

     
    Old English Poetry

    Anglo-Saxon English Poetry

  • The Hero


The Hero, - Those portions of the poem that are summarized above – that is to say, those which relate the carrier of the heroin progressive order – contain a lucid and well- constructed story, told with a vividness f imagination and a degree of narrative skill that may with little exaggeration be called Homeric. 

                      And yet it is probable that there are few readers of Beowulf who have not left – and there are many who after repeated perusal continue to feel – that the general impression produced by it is that of bewildering chaos. The effect is due to the multitude and the character of the episode. In the first place, a very great part of what the poem tells about Beowulf himself is not presented in regular sequence, but by way of retrospective mention or narration. The extent of the material thus introduced out of course may be seen from the following abstract.   

 

                      When seven years old the orphaned Beowulf was adopted by his grandfather king Hrethel, the father of Hygelac, and was regarded by him with as much affection as any of his own sons. In youth, although famed for his wonderful strength of grip, he was generally dispised as sluggish and unwarlike. Yet even before his encounter with Grendel, he had won renown by his swimming contest with another youth named Breca, when after battling for seven days and nights with the waves and slaying many sea-monsters, he came to land in the country of the Finns. In the disastrous invasion of the land of the Hetware, in which Hygelac was killed, Beowulf killed many of the enemies, amongst them a chieftain of the Hugas, named daghrefn, apparently the slayer of Hygelac. In the retreat he once more displayed his powers as a swimmer, carrying to his ship the armor of thirty slain enemies. When he reached his native land, the widowed queen offered him the kingdom, her son Heardred being too young to rule? Beowulf, out of loyalty, refused to be made king, and acted as the guardian of Heardred during his minority, and as his counselor after he came to man’s estate. By giving shelter to the fugitive Eadgils, a rebel against his uncle the king of the “Swain”(the Swedes, dwelling to the north of the Gauter), Hearderd brought on himself an invention, in which he lost his life. When Beowulf became king, he supported the cause of Eadgils by force of arms; the king of the Swedes was killed, and his nephew placed on the throne.   


Historical Value


Now, with one brilliant exception – the story of the swimming-match, which is felicitously introduced and finely told – these retrospective passages are bought in more or less awkwardly, interrupt inconveniently the course of the narrative, and are too condensed and allusive and allusive in style to make any strong poetic impression. Still, they do serve to complete the portraiture of the hero’s character. There are, however, many other episodes that have nothing to do with Beowulf himself but seem to have been inserted with a deliberate intention of making the poem into a sort of cyclopedia of Germanic tradition. They include many particular of what purports to be the history of the royal houses, not only of the Gauter and the Danes but also of the Swedes, the continental Angels, the Ostrogoths, the Frisians, and the Heatobeards, besides references to matters of the unlocalized heroic story such as the exploits of Sigismund. The Saxons are not named, and Franks appears only as a dreaded hostile power. Of Britain there is no mention; and though there are some distinctly Christian passages, they are so incongruous in tone with the rest of the poem that they must be regarded as interpolations. In general, the extraneous episodes have no great appropriateness of their context and have the appearance of being abridged versions of stories that had been related at length in poetry. Their confusing effect, for modern readers, is increased by a curiously irrelevant prologue. It begins by celebrating the ancient glories of the Danes, tells in allusive style the story of Scyld, the founder of the “Scylding” dynasty of Denmark, and praises the virtues of his son Beowulf. In this Danish Beowulf had been the hero of the Poem, the opening would have been appropriate, but it seems strangely out of place as an introduction to the story of his namesake.


However detrimental these redundancies may be to the poetic beauty of the epic, they add enormously to its interest for students of Germanic history of the legend. If the mass of traditions which it purports to the early history of the peoples of northern Germany and Scandinavia. Bat the value to be assigned to Beowulf in this respect can be determined only by ascertaining its probable date, origin and manner of composition. The criticism of the Old English epic has therefore for nearly a century been justify regarded as indispensable to the investigation of Germanic antiquities.

The beginning stage of all Beowulf analysis is the reality (found by N. F. S. Grundtvig in 1815) that one of the scenes of the lyric has a place with bona fide history. Geology of Visits, who passed on in 594, relates that in the rule too Theodoric of Metz (511-534) the Danes attacked the kingdom, and carted away numerous prisoners and much loot to their boats. There lord, whose name shows up in the best MSS, as Chlochilaicus (different duplicates read Chlochilaicus, Hrodolaicus, &c.), stayed on shore planning to pursue a while later, yet was assaulted by the Franks under Theodobert, child of Theodoric, and executed. The Franks at that point crushed the Danes in a maritime fight and recuperated the goods. The date of these occasions is esertained to have been somewhere in the range of 512 and 520.A mysterious history composed right off the bat in the eighth century (Liber Hist. Francorum, cap.19) gives the name of the Danish ruler as Chochilaicus and says that we was killed in the place that is known for the Attoarii. Presently it is connected in Beowulf that Hygelac met his demise in the battle against the Franks and the Hetware (the early English type of Attoarii). The types of the Danish lord's name given by the Frankish students of history are debasements of the name of which the crude Germanic from was Hugilaikaz, and which by standard phonetic change moved toward becoming in Old English Hygelac, and in Old Norse Hugleikr. The facts demonstrate that the attacking ruler is said in the chronicles to have been a Dane, while the Hygelac of Beowulf had a place with the "Geatas" or gauter. Be that as it may, a work called Liber Monstrorum, protected in two MSS. Of the tenth century, refers to for instance of unprecedented stature a certain "Huiglaucus" lord of the Doors," who was slaughtered by the Franks, and whose bones were saved on an island at the mouth of the Rhine, and displayed as a wonder. It is along these lines clear that the character of Hygelac, and the undertaking where, as per Beowulf, he kicked the bucket, have a place not with the district of legend or lovely development, however to that of notable actuality.


This imperative outcome recommends the likelihood that what the sonnet recounts Hygelac's close to relatives, and of the occasions of his rule and that of his successor, depends on the notable certainty. There is actually nothing to restrict the supposition; nor is there any impossibility in the view that the people referenced as having a place with the regal places of the Danes and Swedes had genuine presences. It tends to be demonstrated, at any rate, that few of the names are 1 imprinted in Berger dexivrey, Conventions Teratologiques (1836), from an MS.  In private hands. Another MS., presently at Wolfenbittel, peruses "Huiglaucus" for Huiglaucus, and (ungrammatically) "gentes" for Getis.derived from the local convention of these two people groups. The Danish lord Hrothgar and his sibling Halga, the children of Healfdene, show up in the Historia Danica of Saxo as Roe (the originator of Roskilde) and Helgo, the children of Haldanus. The Swedish privence Eadgils, child of Ohthere, and Oneal, who is mentioned in Beowulf, are in the Icelandic Heimskrigla called Adil's child of ottarr, and Ali; the correspondence of the names, as indicated by the phonetic laws of Early English and Old Norse, being carefully typical. There are different purposes of contact between Beowulf from one perspective and the Scandinavian records on the other, affirming the end that the Early English Ballad contains a significant part of the verifiable custom of the Gauter, the Danes and the Swedes, in its most perfect open structure.


Of the saint of the lyric no notice has been found somewhere else. In any case, the name (the Icelandic type of which is Bjolfr) is really Scandinavian. It was borne by one of the 'early settlers in Iceland, and a priest named Beowulf is remembered in the Liber Vitae of the congregation of Durham. As the verifiable character of Hygelac has been demonstrated, it isn't preposterous to acknowledge the authority of the ballad for three sonnets for the explanation that his nephew Beowulf succeeded Heardred on the position of authority of the Gauter, and meddled in the dynastic squabbles of the Swedes. His swimming endeavors among the Hetware, remittance being made for beautiful distortion, fits astoundingly well into the conditions of the account of the story told by Gregory of Visits; and regardless of whether it was initially related of some other.

 

  •  Middle Ages:

     Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

     

    1.Q. What is Anglo – Saxon Chronicle? Briefly dwell on its importance.

     

    The Anglo-Saxon chronicle is a chronological record of events in England from the beginning of the Christian era to the middle of the twelfth century It was compiled at different monasteries, and there are seven manuscripts Available. The first history of any branch of Teutonic people, it contains chiefly entries of events which each year impressed the clerical recorder as very Important in the history of the nation. The work remains the phantasmagorical document of those times. Among the brief, dry notices of the earlier part, the tragic narrative  Cynewulf and Cyneheart stand out conspicuously. The systematic plan of Registering national events in the people is ascribed to king Alfred. He has himself given vivid accounts of the struggle with the Danes in 890’s. Beside its value as a historical and social document of the time.The Chronicle also has literary and linguistic significance. Though its literary merit Is unequal due to the involvement of several hands in the composition, it is The greatest prose-work of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the best known. It Affords a complete illustration in itself of the development of the Old English Prose, and also contains the heroic poem The Battle of Brandenburg. So,itch Distinction is equal to that of Beowulf. Moreover, changes in the orthography Of the English language are exemplified in the Chronicle: the late Old English Of the tenth century almost changes to Middle English before the narrative Comes to an end.

     

    Q.Who was the inspiration and mainstay of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? Which famous poems are found in it?

    Ans: king Alfred was the inspiration and mainstay of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the first historical record of important national events. It also includeSome famous poems like The Battle of Brandenburg.

    Q.3. When was the battle of Brunanburh fought, and the poem on It composed? What was its theme?

    The historical battle of Brandenburg took place in the year 937, and The 73-line poem celebrating the victory of the West Saxon dynasty was Composed in the same year. It deals with heroic triumph of King Athelstan And his very young brother Edmund over the combined invading forces of King Constantine III of Scotland, King Owen of Stratchcyde, and Olaf of Dublin, leader of the Norsemen of eastern Ireland.



    Write a note on the elegiac elements in Old English Poetry

     

    Both the apical and non-apical Pagan poetry has some features in common. An elegiac note runs through all the poems. Beowulf is a heroic poem celebrating the heroic exploits of a great warrior -----his victories over Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the fire-spitting dragon. But sadness pervades the poem. It is evident in the moment of fierce battles and of Beowulf’s victory as in the episode of the origin of the treasure which was hid under the earth by the last survivor of a royal family just before his death and ultimately came with the possession of the five –spitting dragon.

     

    The personal poetry or lyrics like The Ruined Burg Doer’s Lament, The Sea Fearer, the wife’s complaint are laments. The Ruined Burg is a complaint written on the ruin of town. It is raises of monotonous; aments. The Wife’s Complaint is the lamentation of a women who has been banished by her lover. In the Husband’s Message, we find a lover sending message of his love by carving songs upon a piece of wood. The Wonderer is a sonfg of friendship and contains a philosophical note at the end. The Seafarer is the most original and beautiful of these poems. This poem is modern in sentiment and it glorifies romance and adventure. Widsith is probably the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem. It depicts the adventures of an unknown traveler who has visited many courts and desired them In Doer’s Lament the poet speaks of a man who has been suddenly thrown out of employment by his masters. He is a minstrel and so he gives expression to his sorrowful feelings in beautiful language.

     

    Give an estimate of Chaucer Genius

     

    Chaucer represents, as no other author does, the Middle Ages. He remains in much a similar connection to the life of his time as Pope does to the previous periods of the eighteenth century and Johnson to the Victorian Era and his place in English writing is considerably more significant than theirs, for he is the principal extraordinary English author - the main man to utilized "knocked words" in English, the first to make English a composite language, a thing reduced and indispensable.

     

    Chaucer benefited by his French and Italian excursions to consider the more yearning ways mainland verse. Chaucer might be divided into three phases - The French, the Italian, and The English of which the latter is the advancement of the initial two.

     

    The sonnets of the prior or the French gathering are firmly demonstrated upon French firsts and the style is ungainly and youthful. Of such sonnets, the longest The Remount of the Rose, a lengthy figurative sonnet written in Octosyllabic couplets and dependent on La Remount de la Rose. Different sonnets of this period incorporate The Book of the Doutches, The objection unto pity , etc. La Romaunt de la Rose exemplified the greater part of the characteristics of the French legend artists of the twelfth and thirteenth hundreds of years. It came to be viewed as a writer's standard and filled in as a model and motivation to the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth hundreds of years. English writers, in a steady progression very likely to praise the marriage of Richard ll to Anne of Bohemia. Like The Book of the Duchesses it utilizes the fantasy shows

     

     

    Troilus and Criseyde is held to be Chaucer's best story work. It is without a moment's delay Chaucer's longest finished sonnet and his most noteworthy creative accomplishment. It triumphantly shows the full virtuoso of Chaucer as a metrical specialist, as a narrator and as an understudy of human character. It relate the terrible romantic tale from the Troilus, the gay youthful knight stop Criseyde, a youthful and lovely widow, whose father Calchas has abandoned Troy and Gove over to the Greek sight, until she demonstrates untrustworthy to him, and passing stops his anguish. The book is inferred inconsistent in three books. Troilus and Criseyde Shows an eminent development in Chaucer's account force and Characterization. The back and forth movement of Criseyde's inclination from the time Pandarus first visits her to her last yielding are depicted with a mental authenticity which we don't discover again in English Literature till we go to Richardson's Clarissa. However it is Pandarus, Criseyde's uncle who is maybe the work of art of the sonnet. In him Chaucer draws an older comedian whom we may contrast and Shakespeare's Falstaff.

     

    The legend of good Women is the sonnet of Chaucer's subsequent period. It is gone out of Fame. It was to have comprised of the accounts of twenty woman of history and legend, yet rather than twenty three are just nine, six of which are the tales of Cleopatra, Medea, hucrece, Ariadne, Philomela and Dido of Carthage. The most important piece of The Legend is its preamble which by and by presents the fantasy setting. The Legend of Good Women is the main known endeavor in English to utilize gallant couplet which is none the less took care of with incredible ability and opportunity.

    The third or English period contains the work of the greatest individual  accomplishment.  The achievement  of this period is  The Canterbury Tales. It is for The Canterbury Tales that  Chaucer’s  name is best remembered, the unfinished collection of stories told by the Pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury. Chaucer’s quick sure strokes portray the pilgrims at once as types and individuals, true of their age and still more representance of humanity in general. The charactess become very vivid for Chaucer had in corse of his life come into contact with hem all.  Chaucer adopts the medieval method of putting a series of tales with one long narrative poem.  At Taburd inn the poet meets twenty nine persons who are proceeding to Canterbury on Pilgrimage. The poem is a great social document. In it Chaucer paints with minute exactness the body and soul of the 14th century English society. Legouis and Coramian rightly say that he is as truly the social chronicler of England in the 14th century as Froissart is the political and military chronicler of the same period.

 

       

  •  Early Renaissance poetry: 

    What is Sonnet? Write a note on the Elizabethan sonnet's Poet.

    The term ‘sonnet’ is derived from the Italian word Sanata. Its synonymous word is “Sonetto”, diminutive of souno(meaning sound). A poem of fourteen lines arranged in a more or less definite rhyme- scheme, and written in the prevailing meter of the language, which in English is the disyllabic or five-foot line. Petrarch, the Italian poet was the first to write sonnets on his unrequited love for Laura. The sonnet was first introduced into English Literature from Wyatt and Surrey in the age of Henry VIII. Wyatt wrote thirty-one sonnets in the strictly Perchance form. This orthodox sonnet was divided into two parts ----Octave (the first eight lines) and Sestet (The last six lines). There is a clearly marked pause in the idea after the eight line. The rhyme-scheme may be represented by abab,abba, in the octave and cde or cdcdcd in the sestet. The Elizabethans were not very strict in the observation of these rules. The English form of the sonnet was made up of three stanzas of four lines each rhyming alternately and a concluding couplet. The rhyme-scheme varied. Three most outstanding songsters of the Elizabethan age were different in both in themes and rhyme-scheme.


    Sir Thomas Wyatt

                                   

    Sir Thomas Wyatt is the father of the English sonnet. He wanted to enrich and reinvigorate English poetry by imitating Petrach. Altogether he wrote 31 sonnets of which the first 19 are rather stiff, clumsy and lacked in the smoothness and grace of Wyatt’s pure lyrics.  But Wyatt followed Petrarchan  in matter not in meter and he mainly wrote ten-syllabic pentameter which is the most important of English meters . Wyatt also introduced the closing couplet in the sonnet. In his latter sonnets Wyatt wrote more freely and touched on politics and real events of life.

     

    Earl of Surrey:

                            Wyatt’s immediate successor, Henry Howard Earl of surrey, handled the sonnet from with greater confidence and success. Some of his famous sonnets are the soothe seasons that bud and bloom forth brings, Love that doth Raina and Farewell love. In the second mentioned sonnet, he used for the first time the rhyme-scheme abab,cdcd, efef, gg which was to be known as Shakespearean scheme



    The Elizabethans: 

    Elizabethan composing suggests assortments of work made during the standard of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In stanza is depicted by different intermittently covering upgrades. The show and change of themes, models, and refrain structures from other European practices and old-style composing, the Elizabethan tune custom, the ascent of a refined stanza oftentimes spun around the figure of the ruler and the advancement of a segment based show is among the most huge of these developments.

     Great Elizabethans


BEDE(673-735) (CAEDMON GROUP)

The venerable Bede, as he is generally called, our first great scholar and “the father of our English learning”, who wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The most important work of Bede   was --- Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In the Ecclesiastical History, Bede tells us how Caedmon suddenly and miraculously received the gift of song and ‘at  once began to sing in praise of God’ – verses he had never heard before. Bede quotes in length, displaying to a remarkable degree the qualities of repetition and parallel phrasing.

 

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