Anglo-Saxon Literature

Early English poems, laws and chronicles provide the material for John Earle's account of Anglo-Saxon writing. He begins by examining Latin culture and its influence on the development of literature in the English vernacular. The chapter sequence moves through early schools and poetry to West Saxon laws, chronicles, Alfred's translations and the writings of Ælfric, ending with the Norman Conquest and its aftermath.

Earle combines literary history with close attention to particular texts. In his discussion of Beowulf, he compares the poem with the tale of Grettir to consider how stories passed between peoples. He also examines fragments of heroic verse and a poem describing a ruined city, asking what their details reveal about sources, dates and places. Readers interested in the beginnings of English literature will find a nineteenth-century scholar weighing such questions, with examples that connect the surviving writings to medieval learning and culture.