Old English LiteratureOld English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon[2] is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages
2. -DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH
-THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
-
-OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS
-OLD ENGLISH GRAMMER
-OLD PRONUNCIATION
-OLD ENGLISH SPELLING
-OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY
3. Historians of the English language distinguish three main stages or
periods in its development.
1 .Old English or the Anglo-Saxon(600-1100).
2.Middle English(1100-1500)
3. Modern English (from 1500 onwards)
The division of a language is a natural growth with a continuous
development
Each periods has distinctive features, justifying such a division ,
though there is no break in the process of continuous evolution.
4. This period extends from the earliest written documents , about the
close of the 7th century to about 1100 by which time the effects of the
Norman Conquest became perceptible
The Old English language also called Anglo – Saxon
The Celts had been living in England when the Roman invaded.
Although they invaded twice, they did not defeat the Celts and Latin
never overtook the Celtic language
The Romans finally left England in 410CE as the Roman Empire was
collapsing, leaving the Celts defenseless. Then the Germanic tribes from the present
day area of Denmark arrived.
. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, the three main tribes had started filtering in
during the last years of the Roman rule.
.
5. These tribes set up seven kingdoms called the Anglo- Saxon
heptarchy that included: Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Wessex, Sussex,
Essex and East Anglia.
They displaced the original Celtic inhabitants of Britain and gave it a
new name England – the Land of angles, and a new language, English-
the language of angles.
The earliest form of English, resulted from the dialects of these three
drives rolling together in to one national literary language
6. 1. Northumbrian in the North comprising the district between the Firth
or Forth and the Humber river .
2. Mercian, spoken between the Humber and the Thames
3. West Saxon, spoken in the region south of the Thames except in Kent
and Surry
4. Kentish spoken in Kent and Surry
7. Old English had a very complicated grammatical system, with a
number of different declensions of the noun and a three gender
system, and with two declensions of the adjectives.
This period has often been described as the period of “full
inflections”, since the inflections(grammatical endings)of nouns,
adjectives and verbs were preserved in full.
Being highly inflected, Old English had a relatively free word
order(syntax).Inflections make meaning less dependent on word
order.
In Old English we find four cases, Nominative, Accusative, Gentive,
and the Dative case.
8. Old English had a complicated and illogical three gender system.
There was no one -to-one correspondence between the natural
gender and grammatical gender of nouns
Each noun had to have a gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter,
arbitrarily fixed.
Thus, Old English wif and wifmann meant women, but the former
was neuter gender and the latter masculine. Stan was masculine
and sunna feminine.
In Old English there were two separate declensions of adjectives,
the weak and the strong
9. In Old English, verbs had only two tense, the present and the
preterit (like the past). Making use of these two tenses, the
semantic concepts of present, past, and future time were expressed
Old English grammar, however is comparatively simple, compared
to that of proto Germanic
10. Old English was more or less phonetic in character , its spelling
representing its pronunciation fairly closely
The two major sound change on Old English were- mutation and
gradation,
11. The Germanic tribes used a particular kind of alphabet called the
runic Alphabet.
The typical Runic symbols were not in modern english spelling, but
they are used in phonetic script.
The old english spelling was phonetic in character, each letter
representing a sound and it contained no silent letters.
Old english has seven vowels a,e,i,o,u,y (a+e)was the speciality of
Old English
Old English remained a phonetic language without the discrepancy
between spelling and pronunciation, which is conspicuous in Modern
English
c
.
.
12. This period is characterized by homogeneous Anglo-Saxon
language, remarkable for its high degree of purity, with only a
small amount of Latin loan words , followed by some Norse
elements, consequent on the Norse invasion.
The Old English word stock was enriched by Indo-European words, Celtic
element, Latin influence and the Scandinavian influence.
Indo-European words:
These include words denoting close family relations, cardinal numbers
upto ten, the words man and tree, words associated with nature and
universe such as moon, sun ,earth, fire, star etc, words relating to
fundamental concepts in farming and cultivation, names of basic
weapons like the shield, and names of basic colures such as red and
yellow.
13. The Celtic element of Old English:
The Anglo – Saxon, however, preserved the Celtic names of cities and
towns and rivers and mountain and some words referring to natural
features of landscape. Place names like Kent, London, Cornwall York and
the first syllable of Winchester, salisbury, Worcester, river name like
Thames, Avon, Wye, Dover are all traceable to a Celtic source.
The Latin vocabulary in Old English:
Latin words entered Old English in two phases: (1)during the Roman
occupation and (2)through the early Christian missionaries
A few words like devil (defol), night (niht)and angel (engle)came in with
the Anglo Saxons.
.Latin words introduced by Christian missionaries are naturally of religious
nature. Eg: priest, monk, biship, pope, abbot, cross (cruce) saint (sanct)
etc.
14. The major text we will read from this period is the EPIC Beowulf. It
is the story of a Scandinavian (GEAT) warrior or knight probably in
the sixth century, who comes to help a neighboring tribe, the
Danes, who are being attacked by a monster.
We study English history to understand the CONTEXT of Beowulf,
and we study Beowulf to understand the world which was OLD
ENGLISH.
Consider the fighting, hunting, farming and loving Anglo-Saxon
heritage. The Non-Christians only hope was for fame and
commemoration in poetry.
Beowulf is considered the shining star of Old English literature.
The Book of Exeter is the largest surviving collection of poetry
