16- ) English Literature

16-) English Literature 

Caedmon, The First English Poet

Cædmon (/ˈkædmən, ˈkædmɒn/; fl. c. 657–684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known.  Caedmon is recognised as the first English poet composing his Hymn in the 7th century at Whitby Abbey, as told by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English people . Caedmon was one of the first people to compose poetry in the English language, making him the founder of English literature as we know it today. In Caedmon's day, English was spoken and performed, but Latin and Greek were the languages of Christianity.A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.

Cædmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in mediaeval sources, and one of three of these for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived. His story is related in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People") by Bede who wrote, "[t]here was in the Monastery of this Abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in Old English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven."

Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, a nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God. The poem is one of the early attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the early recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. In 1898, Cædmon's Cross was erected in his honour in the graveyard of St Mary's Church in Whitby.

Life

No detail of Cædmon’s family life is recorded but it is believed that he was born in the year 600 and is perceived to be, at first, a simple, uneducated man. His task at the monastery was to work and sleep with the animals while other monks went about their holy orders by day and feasted, sang and played harps before bedtime.

Bede's account

Much of what is known about the 7th century poet known as Cædmon is thanks to the Venerable Bede’s great work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written in Latin as Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum). Bede was a monk living in the north of England whose carefully documented accounts of life at that time earned him the title “The Father of English History”. Cædmon is certainly one of the earliest known English poets and it is said that the ability to compose verse came to him in a dream one night while resting from his labours at the Streonæshalch monastery contained within Whitby Abbey. His inspiration drove him to become an inspirational poet, producing powerful religious work such as his epic Genesis which ran to twenty one separate books.

One evening, while the monks were feasting, singing, and playing a harp, Cædmon left early to sleep with the animals because he knew no songs. The impression clearly given by St. Bede is that he lacked the knowledge of how to compose the lyrics to songs. While asleep, he had a dream in which "someone" (quidam) approached him and asked him to sing principium creaturarum, "the beginning of created things." After first refusing to sing, Cædmon subsequently produced a short eulogistic poem praising God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Upon awakening the next morning, Caedmon remembered everything he had sung and added additional lines to his poem. He told his foreman about his dream and gift and was taken immediately to see the abbess, believed to be St Hilda of Whitby. The abbess and her counsellors asked Cædmon about his vision and, satisfied that it was a gift from God, gave him a new commission, this time for a poem based on "a passage of sacred history or doctrine", by way of a test.

When Cædmon returned the next morning with the requested poem, he was invited to take monastic vows. The abbess ordered her scholars to teach Cædmon sacred history and doctrine, which after a night of thought, Bede records, Cædmon would turn into the most beautiful verse. According to Bede, Cædmon was responsible for a large number of splendid vernacular poetic texts on a variety of Christian topics.

After a long and zealously pious life, Cædmon died like a saint: receiving a premonition of death, he asked to be moved to the abbey's hospice for the terminally ill where, having gathered his friends around him, he died after receiving the Holy Eucharist, just before nocturns. Although he is often listed as a saint, this is not confirmed by Bede and it has been argued that such assertions are incorrect.

The details of Bede's story, and in particular of the miraculous nature of Cædmon's poetic inspiration, are not generally accepted by scholars as being entirely accurate, but there seems no good reason to doubt the existence of a poet named Cædmon. Bede's narrative has to be read in the context of the Christian belief in miracles, and it shows at the very least that Bede, an educated and intelligent man, believed Cædmon to be an important figure in the history of English intellectual and religious life.

Dates

Bede gives no specific dates in his story. Cædmon is said to have taken holy orders at an advanced age and it is implied that he lived at Streonæshalch at least in part during Hilda's abbacy (657–680). Book IV Chapter 25 of the Historia ecclesiastica appears to suggest that Cædmon's death occurred at about the same time as the fire at Coldingham Abbey, an event dated in the E text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to 679, but after 681 by Bede.

The reference to his temporibus "at this time" in the opening lines of Chapter 25 may refer more generally to Cædmon's career as a poet. However, the next datable event in the Historia ecclesiastica is King Ecgfrith's raid on Ireland in 684 (Book IV, Chapter 26). Taken together, this evidence suggests an active period beginning between 657 and 680 and ending between 679 and 684.

Modern discoveries

The only biographical or historical information that modern scholarship has been able to add to Bede's account concerns the Brittonic origins of the poet's name. Although Bede specifically notes that English was Cædmon's "own" language, the poet's name is of Celtic origin: from Proto-Welsh *Cadṽan (from Brythonic *Catumandos). Several scholars have suggested that Cædmon himself may have been bilingual on the basis of this etymology, Hilda's close contact with Celtic political and religious hierarchies, and some (not very close) analogues to the Hymn in Old Irish poetry. Other scholars have noticed a possible onomastic allusion to 'Adam Kadmon' in the poet's name, perhaps suggesting that the entire story is allegorical.

Other medieval sources

No other independent accounts of Cædmon's life and work are known to exist. The only other reference to Cædmon in English sources before the 12th century is found in the 10th-century Old English translation of Bede's Latin Historia. Otherwise, no mention of Cædmon is found in the corpus of surviving Old English. The Old English translation of the Historia ecclesiastica does contain several minor details not found in Bede's Latin original account.

Of these, the most significant is that Cædmon felt "shame" for his inability to sing vernacular songs before his vision, and the suggestion that Hilda's scribes copied down his verse æt muðe "from his mouth". These differences are in keeping with the Old English translator's practice in reworking Bede's Latin original, however, and need not, as Wrenn argues, suggest the existence of an independent English tradition of the Cædmon story.

Heliand

A second, possibly pre-12th-century allusion to the Cædmon story is found in two Latin texts associated with the Old Saxon Heliand poem. These texts, the Praefatio (Preface) and Versus de Poeta (Lines about the poet), explain the origins of an Old Saxon biblical translation (for which the Heliand is the only known candidate) in language strongly reminiscent of, and indeed at times identical to, Bede's account of Cædmon's career. According to the prose Praefatio, the Old Saxon poem was composed by a renowned vernacular poet at the command of the emperor Louis the Pious. The text then adds that this poet had known nothing of vernacular composition until he was ordered to translate the precepts of sacred law into vernacular song in a dream.

The Versus de Poeta contain an expanded account of the dream itself, adding that the poet had been a herdsman before his inspiration and that the inspiration itself had come through the medium of a heavenly voice when he fell asleep after pasturing his cattle. While our knowledge of these texts is based entirely on a 16th-century edition by Flacius Illyricus,[20] both are usually assumed on semantic and grammatical grounds to be of medieval composition This apparent debt to the Cædmon story agrees with semantic evidence attested to by Green demonstrating the influence of Old English biblical poetry and terminology on early continental Germanic literatures.

Sources and analogues

In contrast to his usual practice elsewhere in the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede provides no information about his sources for the Cædmon story. Since a similar paucity of sources is also characteristic of other stories from Whitby Abbey in his work, this may indicate that his knowledge of Cædmon's life was based on tradition current at his home monastery in (relatively) nearby Wearmouth-Jarrow.

Perhaps as a result of this lack of documentation, scholars have devoted considerable attention since the 1830s to tracking down possible sources or analogues to Bede's account. These parallels have been drawn from all around the world, including biblical and classical literature, stories told by the aboriginal peoples of Australia, North America and the Fiji Islands, mission-age accounts of the conversion of the Xhosa in Southern Africa, the lives of English romantic poets, and various elements of Hindu and Muslim scripture and tradition.

Although the search was begun by scholars such as Sir Francis Palgrave, who hoped either to find Bede's source for the Cædmon story or to demonstrate that its details were so commonplace as to hardly merit consideration as legitimate historiography, subsequent research has instead ended up demonstrating the uniqueness of Bede's version: as Lester shows, no "analogue" to the Cædmon story found before 1974 mirrors Bede's chapter in more than about half its main properties; the same observation can be extended to cover all analogues since identified.

Seerah of Muhammad

The strong affinities between Cædmon's vision and that of the Prophet Muhammad have been widely remarked upon. While meditating in a cave, Muhammad was visited by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to read, just as Cædmon had a vision of an otherworldly visitor as he slept in a cowshed. Muhammad was also illiterate, like Cædmon. When the visitor asks them both to "sing" in Cædmon's case and "read" in Muhammad's case, both refuse to, saying they cannot. Then miraculously both recite divinely-inspired poetry, in Muhammad's case the first verses of the Qur'an. In 1983, Klaus von See, the scholar of Scandinavian and German literature, first put forward the theory that Bede's story of Cædmon had a direct relationship with Ibn Ishaq's account of the revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad, though he was not the first to note the remarkable parallels. Gregor Schoeler also provided a definitive account of the evolution of the story of Muhammad's call to prophecy into Bede's narrative.

Work

General corpus

Perhaps surprisingly, the earliest recorded poem in Old English has very humble origins and is credited to a shy and retiring cowherd named Caedmon.

Bede's account indicates that Cædmon was responsible for the composition of a large oeuvre of vernacular religious poetry. In contrast to Saints Aldhelm and Dunstan, Cædmon's poetry is said to have been exclusively religious. Bede reports that Cædmon "could never compose any foolish or trivial poem, but only those which were concerned with devotion", and his list of Cædmon's output includes work on religious subjects only: accounts of creation, translations from the Old and New Testaments, and songs about the "terrors of future judgment, horrors of hell, ... joys of the heavenly kingdom, ... and divine mercies and judgments."

Of this corpus, only his first poem survives. While vernacular poems matching Bede's description of several of Cædmon's later works are found in London, British Library, Junius 11, traditionally referred to as the "Junius" or "Cædmon" manuscript, the older traditional attribution of these texts to Cædmon or Cædmon's influence cannot stand. The poems show significant stylistic differences both internally and with Cædmon's original Hymn, and there is nothing about their order or content to suggest that they could not have been composed and anthologised without any influence from Bede's discussion of Cædmon's oeuvre.

The first three Junius poems are in their biblical order and, while Christ and Satan could be understood as partially fitting Bede's description of Cædmon's work on future judgment, pains of hell and joys of the heavenly kingdom, the match is not exact enough to preclude independent composition. As Fritz and Day have shown, Bede's list itself may owe less to direct knowledge of Cædmon's actual output than to traditional ideas about the subjects fit for Christian poetry or the order of the catechism. Similar influences may, of course, also have affected the makeup of the Junius volume.

Cædmon's Hymn

The countless translations and amendments to Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica over the years mean that we cannot know the original words of Caedmon’s Hymn with any certainty, particularly as many of the Old English versions would have been a direct translation from Bede’s Latin – so in effect a translation of a translation. Bede also offers no specific dates for the Hymn, save to say that Caedmon lived at the Streonæshalch monastery during Hilda’s time as Abbess and that Caedmon died around the time of a great fire at Coldingham Abbey, said to have taken place between 679 – 681AD.

Although originally composed to be sung aloud in praise of God, the form and structure of Caedmon’s ‘Hymn’ is actually more akin to a poem than a hymn in the tradition sense. The Hymn is also heavily alliterated and contains a pause mid line, a style favoured by Old English poetry which was itself the result of the oral traditions being designed to be read, rather than spoken or sung.

The fanciful nature of Caedmon’s inspiration for the Hymn has led many historians to doubt the authenticity of Bede’s story. The traditional Anglo-Saxon poetry reserved for the worship of monarchs has also been adapted from the original ‘rices weard’ (keeper of the kingdom) to ‘heofonrices weard’ (keeper of the kingdom of heaven) in Caedmon’s Hymn, suggesting a less divine inspiration. However, whilst it is unlikely that Caedmon’s Hymn was the very first poem to be composed in Old English, it certainly takes its place in history as the earliest surviving poetry of its kind, quite apart from its supposedly miraculous inception.

Caedmon’s Hymn in Old English and its modern translation (excerpt from The Earliest English Poems, Third Edition, Penguin Books, 1991):

The only known survivor from Cædmon's oeuvre is his Hymn (audio version). The poem is known from 21 manuscript copies, making it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede's Death Song (with 35 witnesses) and the best attested in the poetic corpus in manuscripts copied or owned in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period. The Hymn also has by far the most complicated known textual history of any surviving Old English poem.

It is found in two dialects and five distinct recensions (Northumbrian aelda, Northumbrian eordu, West-Saxon eorðan, West-Saxon ylda, and West-Saxon eorðe), all but one of which are known from three or more witnesses. It is one of the early attested examples of written Old English and one of the early recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Together with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, Cædmon's Hymn is one of three candidates for the early attested example of Old English poetry.

There is continuing critical debate about the status of the poem as it is now available to us. While some scholars accept the texts of the Hymn as more or less accurate transmissions of Cædmon's original, others argue that they originated as a back-translation from Bede's Latin, and that there is no surviving witness to the original text.

Manuscript evidence

All copies of Hymn are found in manuscripts of the Historia ecclesiastica or its translation, where they serve as either a gloss to Bede's Latin translation of the Old English poem, or, in the case of the Old English version, a replacement for Bede's translation in the main text of the History. Despite this close connection with Bede's work, the Hymn does not appear to have been transmitted with the Historia ecclesiastica regularly until relatively late in its textual history. Scribes other than those responsible for the main text often copy the vernacular text of the Hymn in manuscripts of the Latin Historia. In three cases, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 243, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 43, and Winchester, Cathedral I, the poem is copied by scribes working a quarter-century or more after the main text was first set down.

Even when the poem is in the same hand as the manuscript's main text, there is little evidence to suggest that it was copied from the same exemplar as the Latin Historia: nearly identical versions of the Old English poem are found in manuscripts belonging to different recensions of the Latin text; closely related copies of the Latin Historia sometimes contain very different versions of the Old English poem. With the exception of the Old English translation, no single recension of the Historia ecclesiastica is characterised by the presence of a particular recension of the vernacular poem.

Earliest text

Although Caedmon has been referred to many times in medieval literature, it is the ‘Father of English History’, the Venerable Bede (672 – 26 May 735 AD) who first refers to Cademon in his seminal work of 731AD, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People). According to Bede, Caedmon tended to the animals which belonged to the Northumbrian monastery of Streonæshalch (later to become Whitby Abbey) during St Hilda’s time as Abbess between 657– 680AD.

As legend would have it, Caedmon was unable to sing and knew no poetry, quietly departing the mead hall whenever the harp was passed around so that he would not embarrass himself in front of his more literate peers. On one such evening as he fell asleep amongst the animals in his care, Caedmon is said to have dreamt that an apparition appeared before him telling him to sing of the principium creaturarum , or ‘the beginning of created things’. Miraculously, Caedmon suddenly began to sing and the memory of the dream stayed with him, allowing him to recall the holy verses for his master, Hilda and members of her inner circle.

The story, according to Bede, is that Cædmon dreamt one night that he could sing and compose verse. In the dream an unknown person asked him to sing a song about “the beginning of all created things”. This must have been quite a vivid dream because he was inspired to write the eulogistic poem which is known as Cædmon’s Hymn. It was a poem praising God and acknowledging that He created all of heaven and earth. It was written in Latin but here is a translation of at least some of it:

poem

So, overnight Cædmon was transformed into both a poet and a singer and, on reporting this great event, he was taken before the abbess and she listened to his story intently. The sincerity that she saw within him convinced her that he should immediately take holy orders as he had truly been given “a gift from God”. The scholastic monks at the monastery set about teaching him about sacred history and doctrine. From then on Cædmon became known as a great poet, capable of producing the most beautiful and pious verse. He was responsible for a considerable number of poems, covering a wide range of Christian topics, written in the vernacular style so that many people could read them.

Cædmon took holy orders at a fairly late stage in his life (possibly in his 50s) and his poetry placed him in an exclusive group of only twelve known Anglo-Saxon poets. From humble beginnings he certainly rose in stature at the monastery and Bede described him as:

poem

Scholars that came along in the following centuries might have been sceptical about this story of the miraculous conversion of a simple shepherd into a great and learned poet but Bede’s account certainly rings true in many quarters. He believed that Cædmon deserves his place amongst the great names of English religious figures and intellectuals.

Cædmon’s life ended sometime around the year 670 which meant that he was 70 years old when he died. It was recorded that he had a premonition of his own death.

The theme in the hymn, or song of praise, is that God created the heavens and the earth for the enjoyment of men. Caedmon praises God for His creation. Using repetition, he points out twice that God, unlike man, is eternal. In a fairly pagan Celtic atmosphere, we see some of the earliest influences of Christianity.

The poet used several interesting literary devices in 'Cædmon's Hymn. ' These include alliteration, caesura, and allusion. Throughout the lines, the speaker praises God without going into any detail about stories in the Bible or how his own life was affected when he became devoutly Christian.

Caedmon's Hymn is an alliterative praise poem (and hymn). It depends on rhythmic uses of alliteration, or repetition of the same consonant throughout each line. It represents the use of pagan Germanic poetic conventions in Christian cultures.

Kennings are used in poetry to create different effects. Some examples from the “Caedmon's Hymn” would be: “mankind's guardian” which is saying that God is the protector of humans, “Glory-Father” where God is described as the father of glory, and “Middle-earth” which explains the place between earth and hell.

In general, we could think of hymns as those songs of praise and worship we send up to God identifying for all to hear His attributes and thanking Him for His amazing intervention in our world and in our lives.

The moral of a story is the lesson that story teaches about how to behave in the world. Moral comes from the Latin word mores, for habits. The moral of a story is supposed to teach you how to be a better person.

Caedmon, (flourished 658–680), first Old English Christian poet, whose fragmentary hymn to the creation remains a symbol of the adaptation of the aristocratic-heroic Anglo-Saxon verse tradition to the expression of Christian themes.

Caedmon describes God in another metaphor as a kind of architect, a "Measurer" whose power is exercised through something called "mind-plans." These might just be "thoughts," but the addition of "plans" in this kenning makes them seem more architectural, like God is doodling with a compass in his head, figuring out the circumference of the world, the depths of the oceanic basins, the height of the sky—you know, the easy stuff.

There sure are a lot of M's here. What's the effect of putting three M-sounds in a single line? For Anglo-Saxon poets, alliteration was a way of organizing the line around its four stresses and that big space in the middle. For more on how alliteration became a calling card for all major Anglo-Saxon poetry, see "Form and Meter." And look out for more alliterating words below!

When Caedmon was able to produce more religious poetry it was decided that the gift was a blessing from God. He went on to take his vows and become a monk, learning his scriptures and the history of Christianity from Hilda’s scholars and producing beautiful poetry as he did so.

Caedmon remained a devout follower of the Church for the rest of his life and although never formally recognised as a saint, Bede notes that Caedmon was granted a premonition of his death following a short illness – an honour usually reserved for the most holy of God’s followers – allowing him to receive the Eucharist one last time and to arrange for his friends to be with him.

Unfortunately all that remains of Caedmon’s poetry today is the nine line poem known as Cædmon’s Hymn, which Bede includes in his Historia ecclesiastica and is said to be the poem that Caedmon first sang in his dream. Interestingly, Bede chose not to include the Old English version of Cædmon’s Hymn in his original version of the Historia ecclesiastica, but instead the Hymn was written in Latin, presumably to appeal to a world-wide audience who would be unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxon language. The Hymn appears in Old English in subsequent versions of the Historia ecclesiastica which were translated by the Anglo-Saxons from the eight century onwards.

The oldest known version of the poem is the Northumbrian aelda recension. The surviving witnesses to this text, Cambridge, University Library, Kk. 5. 16 (M) and St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18 (P), date to at least the mid-8th century. M in particular is traditionally ascribed to Bede's own monastery and lifetime, though there is little evidence to suggest it was copied much before the mid-8th century.

The following text, first column on the left below, has been transcribed from M (mid-8th century; Northumbria). The text has been normalised to show a line-break between each line and modern word-division. A transcription of the likely pronunciation of the text in the early 8th-century Northumbrian dialect in which the text is written is included, along with a modern English translation.

Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven,

the might of the architect, and his purpose,

the work of the father of glory — as he the beginning of wonders

established, the eternal lord,

He first created for the children of men

heaven as a roof, the holy creator

Then the middle earth, the guardian of mankind

the eternal lord, afterwards appointed

the lands for men, the Lord almighty.

Bede's Latin version runs as follows:

"Now we must praise the author of the heavenly realm, the might of the creator, and his purpose, the work of the father of glory: as he, who, the almighty guardian of the human race, is the eternal God, is the author of all miracles; who first created the heavens as highest roof for the children men, then the earth."

Praise now to the keeper of the kingdom of heaven,

the power of the Creator, the profound mind

of the glorious Father, who fashioned the beginning

of every wonder, the eternal Lord.

For the children of men he made first

heaven as a roof, the holy Creator.

Then the Lord of mankind, the everlasting Shepherd,

ordained in the midst as a dwelling place,

Almighty Lord, the earth for men.

ABSTRACT

Caedmon‟s hymn is an Old English poem written by a Northumbrian shepherd who had likely received the inspiration from the Christian God. It is considered as vernacular poetry, it was initially written in the Northumbrian dialect and, later on, transmitted into other translated versions. This brief paper is a literary analysis of the Leningrad version of thehymn with the aim to highlight stylistic features, use of language, themes, and value of the composition with reference to the contributions of several experts of the poem.

INTRODUCTION

Caedmon‟s hymn is the first poetic composition to be known of Old English literature. An account of this hymn is given by the Venerable Bede, a monk, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People  in which he refers of a herdsman called Caedmon who lived in Streonæshalch, (the older name for Whitby) in a period of time between 600-670 CE. According to Bede, Caedmon was an illiterate and a shy person who avoided to sing in public during feasts at the Hall, but one night something uncommon and extraordinary happened to him: he had a dream and, thereafter, could sing about the creation of heaven and earth thanks to a divine inspiration. At first those who knew him were skeptical about the verses he pronounced and, therefore, he was conducted to the abbess of the monastery of Whitby, Hilda, who after examining the situation and consulting some scholars, judged that the event was a miracle and that Caedmon had certainly been inspired by their Christian God. The hymn is an example of vernacular poetry, a literary work that used common spoken language. It was written first in Northumbrian and then translated in Latin by Bede in his Historia Eccelesiastica. There are different living translations of the poem which were made at the time of the Anglo-Saxons and in the following centuries, but all these renderings generated perplexities about how the original text was really produced.

An Italian scholar, Roberta Bassi, affirms that Bede‟s version of the poem was a translation of the meaning of the composition rather than a literal work on the original text and highlights the existence of several translations in Old

English of the manuscript, thus creating confusion about the originality of the hymn. [1] In her analysis, she also mentions Daniel Paul O‟Donnell‟s, an expert of the hymn who, in his book on Caedmon‟s hymn, suggests the existence of eight translations of the poem.

DISCUSSION: ANALYSIS OF THE HYMN

The version of the hymn analyzed in this paper is the Leningrad manuscript in Modern English:

Now let us praise the Guardian of the Kingdom of Heaven

the might of the Creator and the thought of his mind,

the work of the glorious Father, how He, the eternal Lord

established the beginning of every wonder.

For the sons of men, He, the Holy Creator

first made heaven as a roof, then the

Keeper of mankind, the eternal Lord

God Almighty afterwards made the middle world

the earth, for men.

The stylistic features of the above text can be analyzed with respect to language, structure, alliteration, rhyme, stresses, genre, similes and variation. This version of the poem is written in Modern English, it is made of nine lines,

there are no line-breaks, no rhymes, no alliteration, no relevant stresses differently from what we can detect in the Old English text. The language used is simple, the structure of the sentences follows the sequence „subject-verb-object‟, there are commas in the text evidently used to create pauses, it contains religious terms and words of reverence and praise to God. The structure of the hymn resembles that of a psalm, a religious composition of the Book of Psalms that, in turn, | P a g e – 12 belongs to the Christian Old Testament. The term psalm derives from the Greek word ψαλμοί psalmoi which means „instrumental music‟ and „words accompanying the music‟[2].

In poetry the genre is the way to classify a poem according to its style or subject matter. There are elegies, epic poems as well as dramatic and narrative poetry. Caedmon‟s hymn is a short poem composed in honour to God and talks about the existence of a common Father who created heaven and earth for mankind. It represents an exhortation to live a Christian life and can, then, be considered as a religious composition.Variation is a technique used in poetry to reformulate in different words and with more emphasis the same concept.Its function is that of embellishing and highlighting important parts of the text. This technique is also defined by Niles et al. as “a double or multiple statement of the same basic concept in different words”. The use of variation is very frequent and redundant in Caedmon‟s hymn and it reflects a typical feature of Old Germanic poetry and, therefore, reproduces the aesthetics of an oral poetic performance as suggested by Francis Magoun in his article “Bede’s Story of Caedmon: The

Case of an Anglo-Saxon Oral Singer”. Examples of variation in the text are the eight appellations that the author gives to God who is described as “the Guardian”, “the Creator”, “the Glorious Father”, “the eternal Lord” (repeated twice), “the Holy Creator”, “the Keeper of mankind” and “God Almighty”. A simile is a comparison between two things by means of a connecting word such as like, as and so and usuallycreates the personification of an inanimate object. In his hymn, Caedmon makes an analogy between heaven and roof when he writes that “…He...first made heaven as a roof”. The use of a simile here is symbolical and it then elicits human‟s imagination and creates a feeling of safety and warmth. God is above our heads and gives shelter and repair to us but we can detect here also an implicit comparison to the mead-hall, a place where warriors and thanes of the AngloSaxons used to gather together especially at night, thus representing a welcome, warm and safe environment .Caedmon’s hymn is an example of a composition made first orally which means that the author was able to make verses using the official poetic metre and, in this case, thanks to God’s intervention, the composer could use formulas. In poetry a formula is a specific rhyming scheme or use of several syllables in each line while the process of transferring the spoken language to a written form is called „oral-formulaic composition‟. With reference to this process, two scholars, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, affirmed that some features of Old English texts, like Caedmon‟s poem, resemble the Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey but how Anglo-Saxon poetry was passed down through an oral tradition remains a subject of debate. In Parry's view, formulas were not the exceptional production of talented artists rather the traditional verses of singers that could be remembered and improvised very easily.Caedmon is the first vernacular poet we know by name and his hymn has references to God by using words and terms of the heroic poetry. Caedmon‟s ability to make the hymn and other poems that are included in the Historia Ecclesiastica, was a miracle and his writing skills were undoubtedly inspired by God with the final aim to change people‟s mind. The hymn differs from the usual theme of epic poems regarding battles, glorious deeds and victories over the evils of the period of the Anglo-Saxons and it also diverges from the elegiac compositions depicting conditions of loneliness, despair and deep sorrow. Here we are dealing with a „dream song‟, a composition made with the help of adivine gift, to incite people to praise and worship the Christian God. In a time when Pope Gregory sent disciples and monks to England to convert people to Christianity and to fight pagan values and old ideologies, the hymn takes on a specific purpose: the Conversion of pagans. Its divine inspiration is made stronger by the fact that Caedmon was never able to compose any verse of song that did not deal with religion or that could have a vain and frivolous content.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, Caedmon‟s hymn is an example of a fusion of pagan and Christian themes with the scope to spread

Christianity in a pagan society, as stated by Tiarna O‟ Sullivan. In the poem, the connection between epic poems and religious compositions lies in the fact that God is considered as an „hero‟ and, hence, is comparable to the heroic figures of the Anglo-Saxon period. Beowulf is a widely acknowledged hero of this historical epoch and is described as “the mightiest man on earth” in analogy to the “God Almighty” in Caedmon’s composition. Beowulf and God are, then, both heroes and important characters of Old English literature and may have different roles and antithetical values but are both described as omnipotent. To reinforce O‟ Sullivan‟s comments is the statement made by another scholar, who affirms that the hymn shares aspects of both Latin and Germanic traditions and that elements of Latin literary and liturgical

influence are evident in the text. A last reflection on Caedmon‟s hymn is the influence his work had on the literature of the following times, especially on the literary production of the last centuries. The concept of “middle world”, in fact,appears in J.R.R. Tolkien‟s epic story „The Lord of The Rings‟ as a tangible sign of the impact of the hymn on the culture and imagery of our time.

15-) English Literature

15-) English Literature

The Best Writers & Poets of The Old English Period 

Cynewulf

Cynewulf is a well attested Anglo-Saxon given name literally meaning cyne (royal, of a king) and wulf (wolf).Cynewulf (/ˈkɪniwʊlf/, Old English: [ˈkynewuɫf]; also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf) There are only a few Old English poets known by name, and Cynewulf (pronounced “kin-eh-wolf”)is one of twelve Old English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th and early 10th centuries. We can definitively ascribe four poems to him, which may not seem like a lot, but these four poems together comprise several thousand lines of poetry. There are a couple more which are possibly his, including The Dream of The Rood.

Cynewulf, (flourished 9th century AD, Northumbria or Mercia [now in England]), author of four Old English poems preserved in late 10th-century manuscripts. Elene and The Fates of the Apostles are in the Vercelli Book, and The Ascension (which forms the second part of a trilogy, Christ, and is also called Christ II) and Juliana are in the Exeter Book. An epilogue to each poem, asking for prayers for the author, contains runic characters representing the letters c, y, n, (e), w, u, l, f, which are thought to spell his name. A rhymed passage in the Elene shows that Cynewulf wrote in the Northumbrian or Mercian dialect. Nothing is known of him outside his poems, as there is no reason to identify him with any of the recorded persons bearing this common name. He may have been a learned cleric since all of the poems are based on Latin sources.

Known for his religious compositions, Cynewulf is regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that are interwoven into the four poems which comprise his scholastically recognized corpus. These poems are: The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene, and Christ II (also referred to as The Ascension).

The four signed poems of Cynewulf are vast in that they collectively comprise several thousand lines of verse. In comparison, the one work attributed to Cædmon, Cædmon's Hymn, is quite succinct at nine lines.

It is difficult to determine exactly when Cynewulf lived. His poems appear in two of the manuscripts that survive from the Early Medieval period, the Exeter and Vercelli books, both of which are a collection of poems and other works.  These date to the second half of the tenth century, so we know he lived before then. Dates as early as the 8th century and as late as the 9th are given as to when he actually lived and wrote his poems, with perhaps more credence being given to the 9th century dates, for reasons I don’t have space to catalogue here.

Little is known about the poet himself, but he does leave a few clues behind. First of all, linguistic evidence in his poems tells us they are written in the Anglian dialect of the Anglo-Saxon language (our Old English), as opposed to the Saxon dialect. Therefore scholars believe that he lived in Northumbria, and possibly Mericia . The Saxon dialect was more prominent in Wessex and Kent.

Secondly, he was a learned man, as we see a high level of sophistication in his poetry. As the poems are religious in nature, he was likely a monk or priest. That he came from the Church is also surmised by the fact that his poems referenced other Latin works, and only the people in holy orders knew Latin.

Scholars disagree as to who, exactly, Cynewulf was. His name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, so he was likely not a Celt. There was a Bishop of Lindisfarne named Cynewulf, who died around 780 A.D., who is named as a likely candidate. Others postulate he could be a priest of that name who lived in Dunwich in the 800s, or even Cenwulf, the Abbot of Petersborough, who died in 1006 AD. But this is all speculation, based upon these figures having the same name and living Northumbria or Mercia, so we can’t say for certain.

From the autobiographical epilogues in the poems, we know that at one point in his life he enjoyed the favour of princes and the gifts of kings. He could have been a thegn or a high-ranking scop. Scholars also presume he was a warrior at some point, and as well that he knew much about sea travel, based on the content of his poems. Other than these tantalizing tidbits, we do not know anything about the poet himself.

You might wonder how we know that four poems in particular, namely, Juliana, Christ II (both found in the Exeter Book), Elene, and the Fates of the Apostles (both found in the Vercelli Book), were actually written by Cynewulf. Well, it’s simple. He signed his name to them .Not just any old signature, though. In the poems’ epilogues in which he gave some of the story of his life and asked for prayers,  he included a runic acrostic containing the letters c, y, n, (e), w,u,l,f. The “e” is not included in all four signatures.

Life

Dialect

Runes are the characters used in Anglo-Saxon writing. In the poems these runes both spell his name and stand for a word, so it is not necessarily easy to see that he has signed his name to the poems. However, he does leave us a clue, for in one of the epilogues he says, Here anyone who takes pleasure in songs, if he is sharp of mind, may discover who composed these verses.

Some basic statements can be made by examining such aspects as the spellings of his name and his verse. Although the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts were primarily late West Saxon in their scribal translations, it is most probable that Cynewulf wrote in the Anglian dialect and it follows that he resided either in the province of Northumbria or Mercia.

This is shown through linguistic and metrical analysis of his poems, e.g., Elene, where in the poem's epilogue (beginning l.1236) the imperfect rhymes become corrected when Anglian forms of the words are substituted for the West Saxon forms. For instance, the manuscript presents the miht:peaht false rhyme which can be corrected when the middle vowel sounds of both words are replaced with an [æ] sound. The new maeht:paeht rhyme shows a typical Anglian smoothing of the ⟨ea⟩. Numerous other "Anglianisms" in Elene and Juliana have been taken to be indicative of an original Anglian dialect underlying the West Saxon translation of the texts. Any definite conclusion to Cynewulf being either Northumbrian or Mercian has been hard to come by, but linguistic evidence suggests that the medial ⟨e⟩ in the signed Cynewulf would have, during the broad window period of Cynewulf's existence, been characteristic of a Mercian dialect.

Runic letters spelling out the name Cynewulf appear in four poems: Christ II (or The Ascension), Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene. To these a fifth can be added, Guthlac B, because of similarities in style and vocabulary, but any signature (if one ever existed) has been lost because its ending lines are missing. What characterizes Cynewulf’s poetry? He reveals an expert control of structure as shown from the changes he makes to his Latin sources. He has a flair for extended similes and dramatic dialogue. In Christ II, for example, the major events in Christ’s life are portrayed as vigorous leaps. In Juliana the force of the saint’s rhetoric utterly confounds a demon sent to torment her.

Cynewulf's 1321-line poem Elene is the earliest and most elaborate English account of the finding or Inventio of the Holy Cross by Saint Helena. The poem is based very loosely on historical events. Shortly after becoming sole ruler of the Roman empire in 324AD, Constantine the Great sent his aged mother Helena on a mission to Palestine and his other newly claimed eastern provinces. Helena's stay in the Holy Lands and her efforts to propagate Christianity in the East became the foundation for the legend that she had recovered the True Cross. Cynewulf's Old English verse rendering of the legend depicts Elene as a heroic warrior-queen who embodies both the rightful authority of the Christian State and the triumph of the Christian Church over Jewish Synagogue.

While most Anglo-Saxon poetry is1532 words

Date

All the evidence considered, no exact deduction of Cynewulf's date is accepted, but it is likely he flourished in the ninth century.

A firm terminus ante quem that can be put on the date of Cynewulf are the dates of the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts, which are approximately in the second half of the tenth century. Other than that, no certain date can be put on the author, leaving open the full range of Old English literature between the 7th and the early 10th centuries. Any attempt to link the man with a documented historical figure has met failure or resulted in an improbable connection.[clarification needed] However, the presence of early West Saxon forms in both manuscripts means that it is possible an Alfredian scribe initially translated Cynewulf's verse, placing him no later than the turn of the tenth century.

A tentative terminus post quem is based on the two textual variations of Cynewulf's name, Cynewulf and Cynwulf. The older spelling of the name was Cyniwulf, and Sisam points out that the ⟨i⟩ tends to change to an ⟨e⟩ about the middle of the eighth century, and the general use of the ⟨i⟩ phases itself out by the end of the century, suggesting Cynewulf cannot be dated much before the year 800. Moreover, it has been argued that the "cult of the cross", which can find ground in Cynewulf's Elene, achieved its cultural apex in the eighth century. Also deserving consideration is the argument that the acrostic was most fashionable in ninth century poetry and Cynewulf's own acrostic signature would have followed the trend during this time.

Identity

Cynewulf was without question a literate and educated man, since there is no other way we can "account for the ripeness which he displays in his poetry". Given the subject matter of his poetry he was likely a man in holy orders, and the deep Christian knowledge conveyed through his verse implies that he was well learned in ecclesiastical and hagiographical literature, as well as the dogma and doctrine of the Catholic Church. His apparent reliance on Latin sources for inspiration also means he knew the Latin language, and this of course would correlate with him being a man of the Church.

Cynewulf of Lindisfarne (d. c. 780) is a plausible candidate for Cynewulf the poet, based on the argument that the poet's elaborate religious pieces must lend themselves to "the scholarship and faith of the professional ecclesiastic speaking with authority", but this conclusion is not universally accepted. Alternative suggestions for the poet's identity include Cynwulf, a Dunwich priest (fl. 803), and Cenwulf, Abbot of Peterborough (d. 1006).

Views on poetry

In his Christ II, Cynewulf wrote:

Then he who created this world ... honoured us and gave us gifts ... and also sowed and set in the mind of men many kinds of wisdom of heart. One he allows to remember wise poems, sends him a noble understanding, through the spirit of his mouth. The man whose mind has been given the art of wisdom can say and sing all kinds of things.

Likewise, Cynewulf's autobiographical reflection in the epilogue of Elene claims that his own skill in poetry comes directly from God, who "unlocked the art of poesy" within him. Cynewulf seems to have justified his poetic endeavours through a philosophy in which poetry was "associated with wisdom".

Works

Following the studies of S. K. Das (1942) and Claes Schaar (1949), mainstream scholarship tends to limit Cynewulf's canon to the four poems which bear his acrostic mark: the Exeter Book holds Cynewulf's Juliana and Christ II (The Ascension) and the Vercelli Book his Elene and Fates of the Apostles.

Early scholars for a long while assigned a plethora of Old English pieces to Cynewulf on the basis that these pieces somewhat resembled the style of his signed poems. It was at one time plausible to believe that Cynewulf was author of the Riddles of the Exeter Book, the Phoenix, the Andreas, and the Guthlac; even famous unassigned poems such as the Dream of the Rood, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Physiologus have at one time been ascribed to him.

The  Vercelli Book languished in a dark corner of the Capitulary Library of Vercelli, in northern Italy, until it was re-discovered in the late 1800s and translated by scholars. One of these, John Kemble, is credited with discovering Cynewulf’s acrostic signature in one of the poems and subsequently it was found in the other three as well.

Interestingly, this is thought to be the first “signed” work in English literature. Previous to this, writers of such works preferred to remain anonymous, so as to give God all the glory for their acts of creativity.  However we shouldn’t assume that by signing his name  Cynewulf  sought personal glory. He states that he wished others to pray for him, thus perhaps emphasizing spiritual rewards rather than material ones for his work.

The four poems are written in the typical alliterative style of Anglo-Saxon poetry, such as Beowulf. Elene is the longest poem, comprised of 1,321 lines, and it is about the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. It not all poetry, it also contains a prose section. It is thought to be his finest work, and because of that, some speculate it is the last one of the four to be written, but of course we do not know this for sure. Juliana (731 lines), is another hagiographic poem, about St. Juliana, who was martyred for refusing to marry a pagan man. Christ II (427 lines), also known as the Ascension, is a meditation on a sermon given by Pope Gregory, on the resurrection of Christ. It is the second part of a trilogy on the advent, ascension, and second coming of Christ, all of which are by different authors. The Fates of the Apostles (122 lines), is a poetic telling of the life and death of the twelve apostles of Christ.

Aside from the hidden runic acrostic signature, which I think is pretty cool, the other cool thing about Cynewulf is that he is responsible for one of the most iconic terms in our modern day. As many of you know, J.R.R. Tolkien, aside from being an author, was first and foremost an Anglo-Saxon scholar. He, of course, was very familiar with Cynewulf and his poems, and it is in the poem Christ II where he found the term middangeard, which translates as, “middle-earth”.

The lines read:

Hail Earendel, brightest of angels, above the middle-earth sent unto men, and true radiance of the sun, bright above the stars – thou of thy very self illuminest for every season!

Very Tolkien-esque, no? Earendel can be translated, “radiance of the dawn”, and is a reference to John the Baptist in the poem. But these words had a profound effect on Tolkien, inspiring him to write the “Lost Voyage of Earendel” in 1916, where the character Earendel is transformed into a voyager who carries the morning star on his brow across the sky.

Amazing that this long-dead, obscure poet could still have such a profound impact on our culture today. I’m sure he would be stunned if he knew.

But maybe he does. Perhaps Tolkien and he have had great discussions in the world beyond this world. I’d like to think so!

The four poems, like a substantial portion of Anglo-Saxon poetry, are sculpted in alliterative verse. All four poems draw upon Latin sources such as homilies and hagiographies (the lives of saints) for their content, and this is to be particularly contrasted to other Old English poems, e.g. Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, which are drawn directly from the Bible as opposed to secondary accounts.

In terms of length, Elene is by far the longest poem of Cynewulf's corpus at 1,321 lines. It is followed by Juliana, at 731 lines, Christ II, at 427 lines, and The Fates of the Apostles, at a brisk 122 lines. Three of the poems are martyrolical, in that the central character(s) in each die/suffer for their religious values. In Elene, Saint Helena endures her quest to find the Holy Cross and spread Christianity; in Juliana, the title character dies after she refuses to marry a pagan man, thus retaining her Christian integrity; in Fates of the Apostles, the speaker creates a song that meditates on the deaths of the apostles which they "joyously faced".

Elene and Juliana fit in the category of poems that depict the lives of saints. These two poems along with Andreas and Guthlac (parts A and B) constitute the only versified saints' legends in the Old English vernacular. The Ascension (Christ II) is outside the umbrella of the other three works, and is a vehement description of a devotional subject.

The exact chronology of the poems is not known. One argument asserts that Elene is likely the last of the poems because the autobiographical epilogue implies that Cynewulf is old at the time of composition,[21] but this view has been doubted. Nevertheless, it seems that Christ II and Elene represent the cusp of Cynewulf's career, while Juliana and Fates of the Apostles seem to be created by a less inspired, and perhaps less mature, poet.

Runic signature

All four of Cynewulf's poems contain passages where the letters of the poet's name are woven into the text using runic symbols that also double as meaningful ideas pertinent to the text. In Juliana and Elene, the interwoven name is spelled in the more recognizable form as Cynewulf, while in Fates and Christ II it is observed without the medial e so the runic acrostic says Cynwulf.

Cynewulf anticipates cryptography, using the letters of his own name to make a poem about the Final Judgment. He says, "C and Y kneel in prayer; N sends up its supplications; E trusts in God; W and U know they will go to Heaven; L and F tremble." And this is written in Runic letters.

— Jorge Luis Borges

The practice of claiming authorship over one's poems was a break from the tradition of the anonymous poet, where no composition was viewed as being owned by its creator. Cynewulf devised a tradition where authorship would connote ownership of the piece and an originality that would be respected by future generations. Furthermore, by integrating his name, Cynewulf was attempting to retain the structure and form of his poetry that would undergo mutations otherwise. From a different perspective, Cynewulf's intent may not have been to claim authorship, but to "seek the prayers of others for the safety of his soul". It is contended that Cynewulf wished to be remembered in the prayers of his audience in return for the pleasure they would derive from his poems. In a sense his expectation of a spiritual reward can be contrasted with the material reward that other poets of his time would have expected for their craft.

Elene, a poem of 1,321 lines, is an account of the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena.

The Fates of the Apostles, 122 lines, is a versified martyrology describing the mission and death of each of the Twelve Apostles.

Christ II (The Ascension) is a lyrical version of a homily on the Ascension written by Pope Gregory I the Great. It is part of a trilogy on Christ by different authors.

Juliana, a poem of 731 lines, is a retelling of a Latin prose life of St. Juliana, a maiden who rejected the suit of a Roman prefect, Eleusius, because of her faith and consequently was made to suffer numerous torments.

Although the poems do not have great power or originality, they are more than mere paraphrases. Imagery from everyday Old English life and from the Germanic epic tradition enlivens descriptions of battles and sea voyages. At the same time, the poet, a careful and skillful craftsman, consciously applies the principles of Latin rhetoric to achieve a clarity and orderly narrative progress that is quite unlike the confusion and circumlocution of the native English style.

Overview

The Old English poems attributed to Cynewulf, who flourished some time between the eighth and tenth centuries, are unusual because most vernacular poems in this period are anonymous. Other than the name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not even the most basic facts of where or when he lived. Yet the poems themselves attest to a powerfully inventive imagination, deeply learned in Christian doctrine and traditional verse-craft.

14-) English Literature

14-) English Literature

 Modernism (1923–1939)

The modernist movement continued through the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond.

Important British writers between the World Wars, include the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978), who began publishing in the 1920s, and novelist Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), who was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique in novels like Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). T.S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by others including three further plays after the war. In Parenthesis, a modernist epic poem based on author David Jones's (1895–1974) experience of World War I, was published in 1937.

An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. Among these were coal miner Jack Jones, James Hanley, whose father was a stoker and who also went to sea as a young man, and coal miners Lewis Jones from South Wales and Harold Heslop from County Durham.

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance.[180] Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) published his first major work, the novel Murphy in 1938. This same year Graham Greene's (1904–1991) first major novel Brighton Rock was published. Then in 1939 James Joyce's published Finnegans Wake, in which he creates a special language to express the consciousness of a dreaming character. It was also in 1939 that another Irish modernist poet, W.B. Yeats, died. British poet W.H. Auden (1907–1973) was another significant modernist in the 1930s.

Post–modernism (1940–2000)

Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, with regard to English literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred". In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson, and Ezra Pound. Furthermore, Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little until Briggflatts in 1965 and Samuel Beckett, born in Ireland in 1906, continued to produce significant works until the 1980s, though some view him as a post-modernist.

Among British writers in the 1940s and 1950s were poet Dylan Thomas and novelist Graham Greene whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s, while Evelyn Waugh, W.H. Auden continued publishing into the 1960s.

Postmodern literature is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. Among postmodern writers are the Americans Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, William Gaddis, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote and Thomas Pynchon.

The novel

In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published Under the Volcano, while George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949. Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell whose twelve-volume cycle of novels A Dance to the Music of Time, is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century; Nobel Prize laureate William Golding's allegorical novel Lord of the Flies 1954, explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island. Philosopher Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer of novels throughout the second half of the 20th century, that deal especially with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious.

Scottish writer Muriel Spark pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), at times takes the reader briefly into the distant future, to see the various fates that befall its characters. Anthony Burgess is especially remembered for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), set in the not-too-distant future. During the 1960s and 1970s, Paul Scott wrote his monumental series on the last decade of British rule in India, The Raj Quartet (1966–1975). Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including the writer of How Late it Was, How Late, James Kelman, who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations and Alasdair Gray whose Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in a surreal version of Glasgow called Unthank.

Two significant Irish novelists are John Banville (born 1945) and Colm Tóibín (born 1955). Martin Amis (1949), Pat Barker (born 1943), Ian McEwan (born 1948) and Julian Barnes (born 1946) are other prominent late twentieth-century British novelists.

Drama

An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), a term coined to describe art, novels, film and television plays. The term angry young men was often applied to members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956).

Again in the 1950s, the absurdist play Waiting for Godot (1955), by Irish writer Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (born 1930), (The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard (born 1937) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 1966). Stoppard's works are however also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays.

An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by BBC radio. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard whose "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute Just Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists".[186] John Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme. Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan and novelist Angela Carter.

Among the most famous works created for radio are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall (1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).

Poetry

Major poets like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing in this period. Though W.H. Auden's (1907–1973) career began in the 1930s and 1940s he published several volumes in the 1950s and 1960s. His stature in modern literature has been contested, but probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as one of the three major twentieth-century British poets, and heir to Yeats and Eliot.

New poets starting their careers in the 1950s and 1960s include Philip Larkin (1922–1985) (The Whitsun Weddings, 1964), Ted Hughes (1930–1998) (The Hawk in the Rain, 1957), Sylvia Plath (1932–1962) (The Colossus, 1960) and Irishman (born Northern Ireland) Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) (Death of a Naturalist, 1966). Northern Ireland has also produced a number of other significant poets, including Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon. In the 1960s and 1970s Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a Martian. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid.

Another literary movement in this period was the British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry.[189] The Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the American Beats. Other noteworthy later twentieth-century poets are Welshman R.S. Thomas, Geoffrey Hill, Charles Tomlinson and Carol Ann Duffy. Geoffrey Hill (born 1932) is considered one of the most distinguished English poets of his generation, Charles Tomlinson (born 1927) is another important English poet of an older generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.

Literature from the Commonwealth of Nations

See also: Postcolonial, Australian, Canadian, Caribbean, Indian, New Zealand, Pakistani, African.[note 1] and Migrant literature.

From 1950 on a significant number of major writers came from countries that had over the centuries been settled by the British, other than America which had been producing significant writers from at least the Victorian period. There had of course been a few important works in English prior to 1950 from the then British Empire. The South African writer Olive Schreiner's famous novel The Story of an African Farm was published in 1883 and New Zealander Katherine Mansfield published her first collection of short stories, In a German Pension, in 1911. The first major novelist, writing in English, from the Indian sub-continent, R. K. Narayan, began publishing in England in the 1930s, thanks to the encouragement of English novelist Graham Greene. Caribbean writer Jean Rhys's writing career began as early as 1928, though her most famous work, Wide Sargasso Sea, was not published until 1966. South Africa's Alan Paton's famous Cry, the Beloved Country dates from 1948. Doris Lessing from Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing from 1950 on throughout the 20th century, and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

Genre fiction in the twentieth century

Many works published in the twentieth century were examples of genre fiction. This designation includes the crime novels, spy novel, historical romance, fantasy, graphic novel, and science fiction.

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an important, and hugely successful, crime fiction writer who is best remembered for her 66 detective novels as well as her many short stories and successful plays for the West End theatre. Along with Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982), and Margery Allingham (1904–1966), Christie dominated the mystery novel in the 1920s and 1930s, often called "The Golden Age of Detective Fiction." Together, these four women writers were honored as "The Queens of Crime." Other recent noteworthy writers in this genre are Ruth Rendell, P.D. James and the Scot, Ian Rankin.

Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands (1903), is an early example of spy fiction. John Buchan (1875–1940), a Scottish diplomat, and later the Governor General of Canada, is sometimes considered the inventor of the thriller genre. His five novels featuring the heroic, Richard Hannay, are among the earliest in the genre. The first Hannay novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, was made into a famous thriller movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Hannay was the prototype for the even more famous fictional character, James Bond 007, created by Ian Fleming, and the protagonist in a long line of films. Another noted writer in the spy novel genre was John le Carré.

The novelist Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre. Emma Orczy's original play, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), a "hero with a secret identity", became a favourite of London audiences, playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows staged in England to that date.

Among significant writers in the fantasy genre were J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and J.K. Rowling who wrote the highly successful Harry Potter series. Lloyd Alexander winner of the Newbery Honor as well as the Newbery Medal for his The Chronicles of Prydain pentalogy is another significant author of fantasy novels for younger readers. Like fantasy in the later decades of the 20th century, the genre of science fiction began to be taken more seriously, and this was because of the work of writers such as Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Michael Moorcock. Another prominent writer in this genre, Douglas Adams, is particularly associated with the comic science fiction work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Mainstream novelists such Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood also wrote works in this genre.

Known for his macabre, darkly comic fantasy works for children, Roald Dahl became one of the best selling authors of the 20th century, and his best-loved children's novels include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The BFG. Noted writers in the field of comic books are Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore, while Gaiman also produces graphic novels.

Literary criticism in the twentieth century

Literary criticism gathered momentum in the twentieth century. In this era prominent academic journals were established to address specific aspects of English literature. Most of these academic journals gained widespread credibility because of being published by university presses. The growth of universities thus contributed to a stronger connection between English literature and literary criticism in the twentieth century.

13-) English Literature

13-) English Literature 

War Poets

The First World War brought to public notice many poets, particularly among the young men of armed forces, while it provided a new source of inspiration for writers of established reputation. Rupert Brooke, Slegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen are the major War poets. Rupert Brooke’s famous sonnet “If I should die, think only this of me” has appeared in so many anthologies of twentieth century verse. Brooke turned to nature and simple pleasures for inspiration. Sassoon wrote violent and embittered poems. Sassoon painted the horrors of life and death in the trenches and hospitals. Wilfred Owen was the greatest of the war poets. In the beginning of his literary career, Owen wrote in the romantic tradition of John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Owen was a gifted artist with a fine feeling for words. He greatly experimented in verse techniques.

20th century

Modernism (1901–1939)

English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth century out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth. The movement was influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), James G. Frazer (1854–1941), Karl Marx (1818–1883) (Das Kapital, 1867), and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), among others. The continental art movements of Impressionism, and later Cubism, were also important .Important literary precursors of modernism, were: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Walt Whitman (1819–1892); Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867); Rimbaud (1854–1891); August Strindberg (1849–1912).

A major British lyric poet of the first decades of the twentieth century was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Though not a modernist, Hardy was an important transitional figure between the Victorian era and the twentieth century. A major novelist of the late nineteenth century, Hardy lived well into the third decade of the twentieth century, though he only published poetry in this period. Another significant transitional figure between Victorians and modernists, the late nineteenth-century novelist, Henry James (1843–1916), continued to publish major novels into the twentieth century, including The Golden Bowl (1904). Polish-born modernist novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) published his first important works, Heart of Darkness, in 1899 and Lord Jim in 1900. However, the Victorian Gerard Manley Hopkins's (1844–1889) highly original poetry was not published until 1918, long after his death, while the career of another major modernist poet, Irishman W.B. Yeats (1865–1939), began late in the Victorian era. Yeats was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century English literature.

But while modernism was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not modernists. During the early decades of the twentieth century the Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), and Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), maintained a conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Another Georgian poet, Edward Thomas (1878–1917) is one of the First World War poets along with Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1917), and Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), J.M. Synge (1871–1909) and Seán O'Casey were influential in British drama. Shaw's career began in the last decade of the nineteenth century, while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth century. Synge's most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World, "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in Dublin in 1907. George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues.

Novelists who are not considered modernists include H. G. Wells (1866–1946), John Galsworthy (1867–1933), (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932) whose works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–21), and E.M. Forster's (1879–1970), though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements". Forster's most famous work, A Passage to India 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier novels examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. The most popular British writer of the early years of the twentieth century was arguably Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems.

In addition to W.B. Yeats, other important early modernist poets were the American-born poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 but was born and educated in America. His most famous works are: "Prufrock" (1915), The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1935–42).

Amongst the novelists, after Joseph Conrad, other important early modernists include Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel Pointed Roof (1915), is one of the earliest examples of the stream of consciousness technique, and D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who published The Rainbow in 1915—though it was immediately seized by the police—and Women in Love in 1920. Then in 1922 Irishman James Joyce's important modernist novel Ulysses appeared. Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".