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The Anglo Saxon Period Literature 449 To 1066 | The old English Period

Introduction

The Old English period is also known as the Anglo Saxon period. The age started in the fifth century when the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons came to England Britain from Germany, defeated the English tribes, and started their reign. The Old English period began around 449 and lasted until 1066. During this period the two tribes – ‘The Angles and Saxons’ contributed a lot to the development of the Anglo-Saxon language and culture. In this period Latin Brooks was translated into Old English and people could read and understand them. The historical events which influenced the literature of this period were –

Christianity reached England and the Christianization of the pagan English tribes began.
In the 7^th century, monasteries were established where a written began. Earlier to this whatever existed as literature was oral.
Alfred the Great who reigned over England from 871 to 901 encouraged education and supervised the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Old English literature was almost exclusively verse literature in oral form. It could be passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Its creators for the most part were unknown. When we talk about poetry in Old English literature, There were two groups of poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period. The first group was “Pagan Poetry” represented by ‘Beowulf’, and the second group was religious poetry represented by the works of Caedmon and Cynewulf.

Old English or Anglo-Saxon Poetry

Pagan Poetry

“Beowulf” is the oldest poem in English Literature. It is a perfect example of Pagan Poetry. Here ‘Pegan Poetry’ refers to a heroic poem celebrating the exploits of a great warrior. It reflects the ideals of that state of society, which we call the ‘Heroic Age’. ‘Beowulf’ is the Oldest surviving epic in English literature. It consists of more than 3000 lines, It has been passed from mouth to mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down in the 10th century or at the end of the 9^th century. The main stories in the poem are based on the folk legends of the primitive northern tribes.

Religious Poetry

Caedmon is the first known religious poet of England. He is known as the father of English songs. His life story is vividly described in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Caedmon’s first poem was “The Hymn of Praise”. Later on, encouraged by the success of his first poem, Caedmon composed many other poems by winging biblical material.

Cynewulf and His Poem

Cynewulf lived in the early 9^th century. Except for the unknown composer of Beowulf, he is regarded as the greatest Anglo – Saxon poet. On his life story, we know very little. He was probably an ecclesiastical and a scholar. His remains unknown until 1840.

Anglo Saxon Or Old English Prose

In the 8th century Old English prose appeared. The famous prose writers of that period were ‘Venerable Bede’, ‘Alfred the Great’ and ‘Aelfric’.

Venerable Bede

When we speak of the Old English Prose, the first name that comes into our mind is Venerable Bede, who is the first scholar in English literature and has been regarded as the father of English learning. His works, over 40 in number, were written exclusively in Latin. The most important of his works in “The Ecclesiastical History of English Literature”. It is in this book that Bede describes Caedmon’s legendary life story.

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great King of Wessex Kingdom, is another important figure in the prose writing of the Anglo-Saxon period. During his reign, he tried every means to improve education by founding colleges and importing teachers from Europe. He was a well-known translator. He translated some important Latin works into English, among which, the most important is ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. This book records the main happenings of the Anglo-Saxon period.

Aelfric

Aellfric was a clergyman. He wrote a large number of religious works in Greek and Latin. In his works, he introduced lighter, clearer, and more musical prose.

The Anglo-Saxon or Old English period ended in 1066. A. D. when the last king of Saxon Harold was defeated by William the Conqueror of Normandy at the battle of Hosting.

Conclusion

Thus, we can see the German effect in Anglo Saxon Period or Old English Period. Angles, Saxons,s and Jutes immigrated in the 5th and 6th centuries and set up kingdoms. So we can see that there are religious cultural and language exchanges in society. People started to convert to Christianity. Women were significant and they had to obey men. There were wars at that time that affected work. Works were oral and monks produced literary works in order to transmit those next-generation church and religious languages that were Latin.

So we can say that the Old English period or the Anglo-Saxon period contributed a lot to the development of English Literature.

– Varsha Singh

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Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds | Sonnet 116

Literature, English Literature, Poem Analysis

Introduction

“Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds” by William Shakespeare is one of the most recognizable sonnets of all time. It explores the nature of love and what “True Love” is. William Shakespeare is credited to have written a total of 154 Sonnets.

Out of all the 154 sonnets he wrote, 126 are quite intimate in tone and are dedicated to a young male lover or friend ‘Mr. W. H.’ and rest to a woman known as the ‘Dark Lady’, but there is no documented historical evidence to suggest that people ever existed in Shakespeare’s Life. In this poem, he compares love to the star that is always seen and never changing. Even though the people in love may change as time passes, their love will not.

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was one of the greatest poets and dramatists of the English Language. Born at Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He went to London where his reputation as a dramatist and poet was established. During his literary career, he wrote a total of 154 sonnets, probably written between 1593 and 1598, which were published in 1602. The above-mentioned sonnet is sonnet number 116. He also wrote approximately 37 plays.

From and Structure of the Poem

The poem, “Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds” as is consistent with the sonnet is 14 lines long. Shakespeare breaks from the traditional Petrarchan sonnet, which is usually broken up into an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). Shakespeare, however, writes this sonnet as 3 quatrains (a stanza with 4 lines), with the rhyming couplet at the end. Later this form of sonnet writing was identified as the “Shakespearean Sonnet”.

“Sonnets are largely written in ‘iambic pentameter’, which is also true for ‘sonnet 116’. The rhyme scheme followed by this sonnet is ABABCDCDEFEFGG – three quatrains and a couplet.

The theme of “Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds”

“Love” is the main theme of the poem “Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds”, love versus time, the concept of true love, and love as a source of guidance also are themes that are discussed in this poem.

About The Poem

In the first stanza of this poem, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of marriage to compare. It to true, real love. He is saying that there is no reason why two people who truly love should not be together, nothing should stand in their way. Perhaps he is speaking about his feelings for the unknown young man for whom the sonnet is written, Shakespeare says if love changes, it is not truly loved because nothing will change it.

The second quatrain of the sonnet beings with some vivid and beautiful imagery. He can now tell us what love is – he says that love is something that does not shift, change, or move, it is constant and in the same place.

The speaker says that love is just like a lighthouse in the sea. It withstands the wear and tear of storms and remains unshaken in severe conditions. Just like the north stars shows the direction of the lost ship in the midst of storms, true love directs the wandering souls in the right direction. The worth of true love is also like the value of the North Star. The value of these two cannot be estimated even if we come to know their heights.

In the third quatrain, the poet says that True Love is firm and constant. It never ends. Time has no effect on true love, love is not time’s slave. It does not change with the passage of time. Although time is a universal destroyer. It can destroy everything. It can cut down the physical beauty of a person. But true love does not come in the range of time’s sickle.

Time has no effect on true lovers. Here time is personified as a farmer harvesting the crops with a sickle. In other words, physical beauty is temporary, seasonal, and immortal. He is simply stating here that love does not change over the course of time, instead, it continues on ever after the world has ended.

In the last two lines of the poem “Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds”, the poet says that if someone proves he is wrong about love, then he is never worth the following words, and no man ever loved. He is conveying here that if his words are untrue nothing else would exist. The words he just wrote would have never been written, and no man would have ever loved them before. He is adamant about this and his tough words are what strengthen the sonnet itself. The speaker and poet himself are convinced that love is real, true, and everlasting.

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– Varsha Singh

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Language Of Paradox By Cleanth Brooks

Literature, English Literature

Introduction

The “Language of Paradox” is one of the well-known essays, written by a great American critic ‘Cleanth Brooks’. This is the first chapter of Cleanth Brooks’s Book ‘Well-Wrought Urn’. Through this essay, Brooks has shown how the poet conveys his thoughts and ideas by using literary devices like Paradox without employing a direct statement in poetry. According to Cleanth Brooks, Paradox covers all shocking deviations and digressions from common opinions and perceptions. It is not merely a literary device. So he states that.

“The language of poetry is
is the language of Paradox.”

Cleanth Brooks, one of the foremost American Literary critics of the 20^th century, spent fifteen years as a professor in the English Department. He was a central architect of the ‘New Criticism’ a critical movement that transformed the teaching of literature in the United States. He profoundly influenced American literary studies and shaped successive generations of students and teachers of literature with his work. Brooks taught at ‘Yale University from 1947 to 1975. Brook’s works included – ‘Literary Criticism: A Short History’ (Cowritten with William K. Wimsatt), ‘A shaping joy: Studies in the Writer’s Craft’, and several books on ‘William Faulkner’. Cleanth Brooks was influenced by modern critics like, ‘T. S. Eliot’, ‘I. A. Richard’, and ‘William Empson’.

Cleanth Brooks asserts that Paradox is the most appropriate and ideal device for poetry in order to convey thoughts as well as emotion. Cleanth Brooks thinks that language employed in science is refined and clear and is free from Paradoxical statements same as Brooks’s opinions that Paradox is the fittest means in poetry.

“The paradox is the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry.”

Brooks has employed three diverse examples from English poetry. He has given an example of William Wordsworth’s poems “It is a Beauteous evening calm and Free” and “Composed upon West Minister Bridge” or John Donne’s famous poem “The Canonization” in order to prove his point of view.

Paradoxes in Wordsworth’s Poetry

Brooks states that the language of William Wordsworth is the language of Paradox. As a romantic poet, William Wordsworth emphasized simplicity of thought and lucidity of expression in poetry. But Cleanth Brooks thinks that Wordsworth’s poem. “It is a Beauteous Evening, calm and free” is pregnant with a Paradoxical statement. The poem begins with the line:

            “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free
            The holy time is quiet as a Nun
            Breathless with adoration.”

Here the poet has compared a beauteous evening to a nun but it actually has more than one meaning. The poet is filled with a feeling of worship at that holy time of evening but the girl who walks beside him is not in that frame of mind of worship.

According to Cleanth Brooks Wordsworth’s sonnet “lines composed upon Westminster Bridge” has literary significance and beauty only because of the Paradoxical situation. The poem holds richness, not due to the poet’s skillful handling of images and nobility of emotion but because of the paradoxical situation. Brooks finds in Wordsworth’s poem both ‘awe and wonder’ of English Romanticism. According to Brooks, they are the fantastic Paradoxes employed by Wordsworth.

In his famous work “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, Wordsworth expressed his views that his primary goal was to choose incidents and situations from the life of Rural, rustic, and common life.

Paradoxes in Neoclassical Poets

Neo classic writer like Alexander Pope has also made fine use of Paradoxes along with irony. In his famous work, “Essay on Man” Pope uses Paradoxes.

According to Cleanth Brooks Paradoxes and irony are cradled in the poet’s language in which both connotation and denotation play a vital role. There is a fine blending of irony and Paradoxes in some of William Wordsworth’s poems also the works of William Blake and Thomas Gray are also no exception. Samuel Taylor, Coleridge in his “The Rime of Ancient Mariner” has dexterously used this poetic device.

In the poem, “Canonization” the speaker addresses a silent listener who may be deemed as a sign of the Practical world which considers love as a useless and meaningless affair. The two lovers escape from the convention, rules, and bindings of the secular world. The poet says:

“Or chide my Palsy or my gout,
My five grey hairs or ruined fortune flout.”

The lover in these lines tells the listener that he should not consider his love disease immoral and asks him to confine himself to his other flaws, his palsy, and his approaching old age. The secular friend should not find faults in his love affair because no one is affected by a love affair.

Cleanth Brooks in the conclusion part of the essay states, “I submit that the only way by which the poet could say what “The Canonization” says, is by Paradox”.

Difference between the language of poetry and Science

Cleanth Brooks further differentiates between science and poetry. He thinks that it is the tendency of science to make terms lifeless and direct with the help of denotations. In poetry, the poet brings novelty to terms by deviating from the denotative meaning of terms and their dictionary meaning.

Science makes use of direct expressions which are quite rigid whereas poets hind the message and meaning of their work by employing poetical devices like Paradoxes and irony, the language of poetry cannot be direct. Brooks states that the directness of language is of no use in poetry.

Conclusion

Cleanth Brooks developed a method of analyzing a literary work by embracing T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards’s method in New Criticism. His work “Understanding Poetry” produced in collaboration with Robert Penn Warren established the Vogue of New Criticism which emphasized close reading of the text. In brief, Cleanth Brooks regarded Paradox as a virtue of poetry, he has shown how literary devices like Paradox, irony, etc. play a vital role in the meaning of the literary text by examining the works of William Wordsworth and John Donne.

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– Varsha Singh

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The Challenge of Our Time Summary By E. M. Forster

Literature, English Literature, Essay, Summary

Introduction

“The Challenge of Our Time” is a beautiful and instructive essay nicely written by E. M. Forster, who is known as a great novelist, essaying, philosopher, short story writer, and social reformer of the modern history of English literature. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class differences and hypocrisy in early 20^th-century British society. Among his famous novels included,

A Passage To India
Where Angles Fear to Tread
Howards End
A Room with a View

Forster also wrote two great volumes of the collective essays ‘Two Cheers For Democracy’ and ‘Abinger Harvest’. The present essay ‘The Challenge of Our Time’ has been extracted from ‘Two Cheers For Democracy’.

Analysis Of The Challenge Of Our Time

The essay ‘The Challenge of Our Time’ is first given in the form of a talk by Forster in a seminar where writers, artists, and intellectuals assembled to discuss the challenge of the time. The writer and artist were greatly influenced by science and technology in human life. E. M. Forster defended his discussion of these problems by saying that an artist supposed to care for man cannot remain indifferent to such problems.

E. M. Forster started this essay with a statement that,

            “Temperamentally, I am an individualist.
            Professionally I am a writer and my books
            emphasize the importance of personal
            relationship and the private life,
            for I believe in them.”

As an individualist, he understands the problem faced by the world. Through this essay, he describes the problem ‘The Struggle of the Spirit to cope with the modern world,’ which according to him is the greatest challenge, faced by mankind.

After witnessing the terrible period between the two world wars, Forster looks back at the Victorian era which was really a wonderful period. It was a period of generosity and humanism, in which education was given a lot of importance. But the problem with Victorian education was that it did not make people understand their economic position. When money came in the form of fat dividends, people never realized that the poor were being exploited for them to get so much money.

“The poor have kicked.
The backward races are
kicking – and more
power to their boots.”

In the modern Age, however, dividends have been reduced to almost nothing. The poor and the backward classes no longer allow themselves to be exploited. Therefore, in order to face this challenge, we must combine the old values with the ‘New Economy’. According to Forster ‘Laissez – Faire’ (Free Trade) will not work in today’s world. In the present day, planning has to be done not merely for the body, but for the spirit.

Forster feels that every artist has a task to perform while facing the challenge of our time. Artists must be free to voice their views. Their aim must be to provide art for art’s sake and not for moral and social purposes. In other words, Forster says that art is the greatest inspiration for mankind. It frees his mind from the problems caused by the modern age.

The intellectual is definitely closer to humanity than the scientist. This is because the scientist is under a lot of pressure and control. He is isolated by mankind and does not get a chance to come closer to society. Forster says that scientists must respect the individual’s thoughts and feelings, though their scientific inventions for the benefit of society in general. Only when individual feelings are given importance can we face the challenge of our time.

Conclusion

Thus, at the end of this essay, E. M. Forster says about Scientists,

“It is high time he
came out of his
ivory laboratory.
We want him to plan
for our bodies. We do
not want him to plan
for our minds.”

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Ancient Indian Literature | History Of Indian Classical Literature

Indian Literature, English Literature, Indian aesthetics, Literature

Introduction

Ancient Indian Literature is one of the most beautiful and voluminous to read and understand. Most of the literature was oral during the ancient period. At the beginning of the literature was transmitted orally from one person to another. There were no written records. Ancient Indian literature consists of four Vedas called ‘Rigveda’, ‘Yajur Veda’, ‘Sama Veda’, and ‘Atharva Veda’.

Ramayana And Mahabharata

Ramayana and Mahabharata are considered great Indian epic poetry of ancient times. They were originally composed in Sanskrit, but have since been translated into many languages. Ramayana is an ancient epic poem that describes the struggle of Prince Rama to release his wife Sita from the hands of the demon Ravana. The author of Ramayana is Valmiki. It is considered one of the largest epic literature in the world. It consists of 24,000 verses and 500 Sargas.

Mahabharata is an ancient epic literature that tells the story of the Bharata dynasty. The author of Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. It consists of 100,000 verses. Some of the important moral stories in Mahabharata include ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and ‘Damayanti’.

Early Buddhist Literature

In 483 BC, the teaching of Buddha was rehearsed and validated in the first council, after which were separated into three Pitakas. The teachings of Buddha were written down in Pali. Pali is the language of the oldest Buddhist writings. Dialogues between the Buddha and his disciples make up the Sutta Pitaka. Buddhacharita is a Sanskrit text on the life of Buddha, authored by Ashvaghosha.

A number of literary works written just prior to the beginning of the Gupta age had secular characters. This period saw the development of poetry and drama. The subject of these works were majorly political events, allegories, comedies romances, and philosophical questions.

Ancient Sanskrit Literature

Ancient Sanskrit literature refers to the vast corpus of texts written in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, over a period of more than 5,000 years. Sanskrit literature is an integral part of India’s cultural and religious heritage and includes a wide range of texts, such as hymns, epics, philosophical treatises, dramas, and poetry.

The most ancient Sanskrit texts are the Vedas, which are a collection of hymns and other religious texts that were composed between 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. The Rigveda is the oldest and most important of the four Vedas, and it is considered the oldest known religious text in the world

Kalidasa is considered the greatest poet in Sanskrit literature. He wrote Raghuvansham and Kumarasambhavam along with many other works Meghadootam and Abhijnanshakntalam are the most famous plays of Kalidasa. These are some poets of Sanskrit literature and their works including,

“Banabhatta,” wrote ‘Harshacharita’, the biography of King Harsha and Kadambari.
“Bhavabhuti,” wrote ‘Uttar Ramayana’.
“Vishakadutta,” wrote ‘Mudra Rakshasa’.
“Shudraka,” wrote ‘Mriccha Katika’.
“Dandin,” wrote ‘Daskumarcharita’.

There were also a large number of philosophical literature. The most important ones are those of “Sankaracharya”.

Ancient Indian literature does not only mean the Vedas and the epics, it has much more to understand and learn from it. Ancient literature also clearly explains the duties of a person and how a person shows in character. There were Shastra who dealt with science and math. Kautilya’s “Arthashastra” deals with governance and economic policy which is written in Sanskrit.

Conclusion

Now we can say that Ancient Indian Literature contributed greatly to the development of Indian English literature. India has a rich cultural heritage. The progress of humanity in the past is the subject matter of history. In order to understand the present we have to trace back its roots to Ancient India. Ancient Indian Literature is the most beautiful and complicated to read and understand. The Vedas, the Shastras, and the Upanishads help human being to develop their character and lead a good life.

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– Varsha Singh

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