British literature

History of Language, 2019

The role of literature in history is reified by the growth, creation and unification of literary times, movements, events, authors and literary works that follow each other. On the basis of the opposition between normative tradition and experimental innovation, each new literary period, movement, trend results in and rejects the previous ones. Tradition and innovation are part of a single cycle of literary change and growth, contrary yet interrelated, arising under different names in different times and in the context of different movements, trends and literary works. Considering the major periods in the history of English literature, it can be divided mostly in three parts; Old English period, Middle English period and Modern English period. Old English literature, also known as Anglo-Saxon literature, is generally dated between 449/600 (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invasion of Britain) and 1100/1200 (Norman rule establishment). It is speculated that the British Isles were populated by Iberians until the sixth century BC and by Celts from the sixth / seventh century BC. The year of the Roman conquest is 55 BC, and the years between 410 AD and 441 AD are the time of the Roman withdrawal. 449 is the standard date of the arrival from the land of the Germanic people. The invasion continued for a century and a half with irregular arrivals, up to about 600. During Roman rule, the Christianized Celtic people of Britain were pushed westward by the invaders to Wales and Cornwall and north into Scotland's Highlands, bringing modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.

The Anglo-Saxon invaders who came to Britain in the 5 th and 6 th century, were the founders of English Culture and English literature. They gave England its name, its language. The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes pushed the Romanized Britons into western corners of England (Celts -part of them survived as Welsh). This new barbarian society reflected heroic ideals.

The Beginnings: English literature began far back with the beginnings of the history of the English people on the continent of Europe. It began with songs and stories of a time when the Teutonic ancestors of English people were living on the borders of the North Sea. The Jutes, Angles and Saxons, the three tribes of these ancestors, conquered Britain in the latter half of the fifth century, and laid the foundation of the English nation. The early settlers were pagans. The Irish missionaries in the Northumbria area began to Christianise the pagan English tribes. Thus, pagan or secular and Christian or religious elements commingled in English temperament from the very beginning. The early English literature is called the Anglo-Saxon period (450-1050) or the Old English period.

-pre-history: the first inhabitants of Britain were the Celts -fairly advanced civilization -today found in Wales, west of England -the ancient Romans called this people 'Britanni' -the country: 'Britannia'

Even though the majority of sources concerning the onset of literacy in Wales and England (see Briggs 2010; Brown 2003, 2006; Colman 1992; Davies 1999; Edwards 2007; Elliot 1957; Fell 1994; Looijenga 2003; Lord 2003; McManus 1991; Opland 1980; Page 1973; Parsons 1999; Redknap, Lewis 2007; Sims-Williams [1998] 2006, [2003] 2004) stipulate the significance of early writing systems, it may be argued that these stages of cultural development were overshadowed by Latin influences at some point in history. Contemporary theories concerning the origins of writing (see Schmandt-Besserat [1992] 2006, 2007) and oral patterns of thinking (see Ong [1982] 2002; Luria [1974] 1976; Goody 1968, 1994) suggest that there exists an elaborate manner of evolution of cultural practices among the representatives of oral societies seeking to adopt the technology of writing as one of the methods of collecting and storing valuable information. In terms of post-Roman Britain it can be observed that the two most vivid examples of such practices are runic and ogham scripts. In order to gauge the scale and character of cultural processes which led to the adoption of runic and ogham scripts, and eventually, their being supplanted by the Latin alphabet in the British Isles, one should take a closer look at the earliest inscriptions found in Wales and England. This study presents an overview of my doctoral research, which incorporated a text corpus consisting of 23 Latin and ogham inscriptions from the counties of Breconshire and Glamorgan, as well as ten runic inscriptions from England. A closer study of geographical, linguistic and cultural factors, set within the framework of text linguistics demonstrated that the pre-literate period of British history witnessed a degree of cultural and linguistic richness and diversity.

Special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2001