In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry ‘The Dream of the Rood’ is one of the gems of Anglo-Saxon poetry. ‘Rood’ is an Old English word for ‘Cross’, and poem tells of a pious man’s encounter with a talking […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry ‘The Seafarer’ is one of the earliest poems in English literature. Its ‘plot’ can be summarised easily enough: an elderly sailor speaks to us about his alienation from the world. The 124-line […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry It’s a sobering thought that all of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived is found in just four manuscripts which escaped the ravages of time, the pillaging of the Vikings, and the […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry The Battle of the Blackwater was real and not just something that happened in Game of Thrones. It’s an odd fact that the first great poem written in English about a real […]
The best Anglo-Saxon books and poems selected by Dr Oliver Tearle What are the finest works of Anglo-Saxon literature? We’ve restricted our choices to works of literature written in Anglo-Saxon or Old English, so that rules out Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which, as the title suggests, was written in […]