BEOWULF!

EPIC POEM
•FICTION (not real)

•main character is a hero
•travels great distances to prove his strength in impossible challenges
•supernatural demons and beasts
•Possibly created by scops (Old English poets), in the oral tradition
•Oral tradition = word of mouth, not written down

•Possibly accompanied by harp

WHEN?
•Written down sometime between the 8th and the early 11th centuries
•(Between 900 and 1200 years old!)

•Known only from a single manuscript

WHERE?
•written in England
•Story events happen in what's now Denmark and Sweden (Geatland = Sweden)
•between late 5th and early 7th centuries A.D.

ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE
•literature written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English)

•mid-5th century to 1066 (the Norman Conquest)

•Old English was the vernacular language

Ordinary people spoke Old English; educated people spoke Latin