Caedmon (657 – 684)
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Also called – Anglo-saxon Milton
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He was a saphered
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9-lines of alliterative poem/hymn in honour of God
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The first native English port who used Anglo Saxon dialect.
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Oldest surviving O.E text
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His works are in: Junius Manuscript
Caedmon’s Hymn
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His works were preserved by the monks of Whitby.
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The earliest Northumbrian poet whose name is known. He was originally ignorant of “the art of song” but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to 8th Century historian Bede.
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The first fragment of literature in English: Caedmon’s Hymn in late 670 (Unfortunately, all of Cædmon’s poems are lost, but Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People does describe one of them, which is known as Cædmon’s Hymn.) ia an alliterative verse.
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His hymn is known to have been copied in 21 medieval manuscripts. 19 of these texts exist in their original form today.
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Genesis, Exodus and Daniel is considered under one title Christ. All four poems draw upon Latin sources such as homilies and hagiographies (the lives of Saints) for their content.
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Where does this quote come from? “Then middle-earth, mankind’s Guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards made.”
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Caedmon’s Hymn
Genesis
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Genesis is a poem of 2,936 lines. The first 234 lines describe the fall of angels and parts of the creation. Lines 235–851 give a second account of the fall of angels and tell of the fall of man. The sequence, style, and superior quality of these lines reveal them to be interpolated.
Exodus
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Exodus, an incomplete poem of 590 lines regarded as older than Genesis or Daniel, describes the flight of the Israelites with considerable dramatic power.
Daniel
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Daniel, an incomplete poem of 764 lines, is a scholarly work closely following the Vulgate Book of Daniel and much inferior to Exodus in poetic quality.
Christ & Satan
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The 729-line piece known as Christ and Satan contains a lament of the fallen angels, a description of the harrowing of hell (Christ’s descent into hell after his death), and an account of the temptation of Christ by Satan.
