The Anglo Saxon Literature Handbook

The Anglo-Saxon era is not only the most remote period of English literary history but for many contemporary readers the vernacular literature produced during the period (traditionally dated from AD 410 to 1066) is among the most impenetrable as well. The language in which the texts were originally composed presents a very real barrier, and even though there are many good translations currently available, the aesthetics that inform Anglo-Saxon verse and prose—an aesthetics only weakly connected to that of contemporary literature—continues to present problems to the common or non-specialist reader.

My aim with this volume is to make the culture and literature of the period that is widely (if mistakenly) held to be one of the darkest in English literary history more accessible to contemporary readers. This is achieved by demonstrating how vital and dynamic Anglo-Saxon verse and prose are through readings of the works themselves (chapters 2 and 3) and by situating selected works within the critical discussions that are currently circulating around them (chapter 4).

While the following proposal generally adheres to the outline of the series, some changes to the plan have been necessary. These changes reflect the realities of the Anglo-Saxon world, a world in which the written historical and literary records are among the most spotty of any period in English history. Only some 30,000 lines of poetry are extant from the period, named authors are few and far between, and critical texts, especially in the vernacular, are virtually unknown.