OLD ENGLISH LITREATURE

-Dealing characteristics of the Old English language…..

OVERVIEW OF OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

-DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH

-THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD- -OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS

-OLD ENGLISH GRAMMER

-OLD PRONUNCIATION

-OLD ENGLISH SPELLING

-OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY

CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH

Historians of the English language distinguish three main stages or periods in its development. 1 .Old English or the Anglo-Saxon(600-1100). 2.Middle English(1100-1500) 3. Modern English (from 1500 onwards)

The division of a language is a natural growth with a continuous development Each periods has distinctive features, justifying such a division , though there is no break in the process of continuous evolution.

This period extends from the earliest written documents , about the close of the 7th century to about 1100 by which time the effects of the Norman Conquest became perceptible The Old English language also called Anglo – Saxon

The Celts had been living in England when the Roman invaded. Although they invaded twice, they did not defeat the Celts and Latin never overtook the Celtic language

The Romans finally left England in 410CE as the Roman Empire was collapsing, leaving the Celts defenseless. Then the Germanic tribes from the present day area of Denmark arrived.

. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, the three main tribes had started filtering in during the last years of the Roman rule.

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THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

These tribes set up seven kingdoms called the Anglo- Saxon heptarchy that included: Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Wessex, Sussex, Essex and East Anglia. They displaced the original Celtic inhabitants of Britain and gave it a new name England – the Land of angles, and a new language, English- the language of angles.

The earliest form of English, resulted from the dialects of these three drives rolling together in to one national literary language

Old English Dialects1. Northumbrian in the North comprising the district

between the Firth or Forth and the Humber river .

2. Mercian, spoken between the Humber and the Thames 3. West Saxon, spoken in the region south of the Thames

except in Kent and Surry 4. Kentish spoken in Kent and Surry

Old English Grammar Old English had a very complicated grammatical system, with a number of different declensions of the noun and a three gender system, and with two declensions of the adjectives.

This period has often been described as the period of “full inflections”, since the inflections(grammatical endings)of nouns, adjectives and verbs were preserved in full.

Being highly inflected, Old English had a relatively free word order(syntax).Inflections make meaning less dependent on word order.

In Old English we find four cases, Nominative, Accusative, Gentive, and the Dative case.

Old English had a complicated and illogical three gender system. There was no one -to-one correspondence between the natural gender and grammatical gender of nouns

Each noun had to have a gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter, arbitrarily fixed.

Thus, Old English wif and wifmann meant women, but the former was neuter gender and the latter masculine. Stan was masculine and sunna feminine.

In Old English there were two separate declensions of adjectives, the weak and the strong

In Old English, verbs had only two tense, the present and the preterit (like the past). Making use of these two tenses, the semantic concepts of present, past, and future time were expressed

Old English grammar, however is comparatively simple, compared to that of proto Germanic

Old English Pronunciation

Old English was more or less phonetic in character , its spelling representing its pronunciation fairly closely

The two major sound change on Old English were- mutation and gradation,

Old English Spelling The Germanic tribes used a particular kind of alphabet called the runic Alphabet.

The typical Runic symbols were not in modern english spelling, but they are used in phonetic script. The old english spelling was phonetic in character, each letter representing a sound and it contained no silent letters. Old english has seven vowels a,e,i,o,u,y (a+e)was the speciality of Old English

Old English remained a phonetic language without the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation, which is conspicuous in Modern English

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OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY This period is characterized by homogeneous Anglo-Saxon language, remarkable for its high degree of purity, with only a small amount of Latin loan words , followed by some Norse elements, consequent on the Norse invasion.

The Old English word stock was enriched by Indo-European words, Celtic element, Latin influence and the Scandinavian influence.

Indo-European words: These include words denoting close family relations, cardinal numbers upto ten, the words man and tree, words associated with nature and universe such as moon, sun ,earth, fire, star etc, words relating to fundamental concepts in farming and cultivation, names of basic weapons like the shield, and names of basic colures such as red and yellow.

The Celtic element of Old English: The Anglo – Saxon, however, preserved the Celtic names of cities and towns and rivers and mountain and some words referring to natural features of landscape. Place names like Kent, London, Cornwall York and the first syllable of Winchester, salisbury, Worcester, river name like Thames, Avon, Wye, Dover are all traceable to a Celtic source.

The Latin vocabulary in Old English: Latin words entered Old English in two phases: (1)during the Roman occupation and (2)through the early Christian missionaries A few words like devil (defol), night (niht)and angel (engle)came in with the Anglo Saxons.

.Latin words introduced by Christian missionaries are naturally of religious nature. Eg: priest, monk, biship, pope, abbot, cross (cruce) saint (sanct) etc.

Beowulf…. The major text we will read from this period is the EPIC Beowulf. It is the story of a Scandinavian (GEAT) warrior or knight probably in the sixth century, who comes to help a neighboring tribe, the Danes, who are being attacked by a monster.

We study English history to understand the CONTEXT of Beowulf, and we study Beowulf to understand the world which was OLD ENGLISH.

Consider the fighting, hunting, farming and loving Anglo-Saxon heritage. The Non-Christians only hope was for fame and commemoration in poetry. Beowulf is considered the shining star of Old English literature.

The Book of Exeter is the largest surviving collection of poetry

THANKYOU

AKHILARAJ.R