1. Anglo Saxon And Middle English Literature

2. Anglo Saxon Timeline 476 Anglo Saxon period begins 597The Roman brand of Christianity is brought to Britain for the first time by St. Augustine 787 The Viking Raids Begin 890 Anglo-Saxon Chronicles have started being written 990 Ælfric begins to write 1066 The Battle of Hastings and the end of the Anglo Saxon period The epic poem, Beowulf, was written sometime between the 8 th and 11 th century

3. Poetry Most Old English poets are anonymous; twelve are known by name from Medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works to us today with any certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred The Great, and Cynewulf.

4. Beowulf One of the most famous poems of Anglo Saxon times, is Beowulf. It is an epic poem of 3,182 lines, which has survived in a single manuscript, though it is now partly damaged by fire It is the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language and the earliest piece of vernacular European literature

6. Medieval Mystery Plays Also know as the Miracle Plays Dramatized versions of biblical stories from the Creation to the Resurrection They were performed in various cycles; the Chester cycle is probably the earliest. It consists of 25 plays, in rhyming verse. The York cycle contains 48 plays, in verse forms of varying sophistication They have been modernised into the play ‘The Mysteries’

7. Piers Plowman A poem by William Langland There are 3 different versions of the text, A, B and C According to the three versions hypothesis, the A-text was written 1367–70 and is the earliest. It breaks off, apparently unfinished. The poem runs to about 2,500 lines. The B-text was written 1377–79; it revises A, adds new material, and is three times the length of A. It runs to about 7,300 lines. T he C-text was written in the 1380s as a major revision of B except for the final sections. There is some debate over whether the poem can be regarded as finished or not.

8. Sir Orfeo A Middle English verse romance it is based loosely on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice told by Ovid and Virgil

9. The Pearl Pearl is an alliterative poem of some 1,200 lines Pearl is a dream vision of immense mystical and devotional pathos