What do you know about Caedmon?
Anglo-Saxon religious
poetry is the work of two Christian poets who were monks—Caedmon and Cynewulf.
They were the representative poets of English Christian poetry. Caedmon flourished
in the last quarter of the seventh century. He was the first man to sing about
Christianity systematically. He was supposed to have written four
poems—Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and, Christ and Satan. All the subjects are taken
from the Bible. Genesis is a poem of God and angels in heaven, of rebellion Of
angels and their fall, of creation of earth and man. Exodus is the story Of the
marshalling of Pharaoh's hosts and the pursuit of Moses and his men• Daniel deals with the first five chapters of
the Book of Daniel. Christ and Satan deals with the lament of the fallen
angels, harrowing of hell and the temptation of Christ. Caedmon's poems are
sometimes paraphrases Of the stories of the Bible. They are strong and spirited
with the gift of descriptive writing the break with Rome and a separate English
nation state with central rule and state
church established. As printing and
Protestantism established, the manuscripts were vernacular survived were
neglected. For example some of Chaucer's works have been lost and Sir Gawain
and the Green knight was not printed until 1839 Literature survived in three
languages—Latin. Norman French and
English. English
writing was local but the English which survived was Frenchified in language
and culture. Avoiding these complexities a brief history of English literature
focuses on modern, and do not look back. In the Middle Age English language
developed in nature and structure. The works of Julian of Norwich and Sir
Thomas Malory in the 15 th century and Chaucer in 14ff century have been
influenced by the works of middle ages
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