The Earliest English Poems

by Michael Alexander (Introduction)

Overview

Anglo-Saxon poetry was produced between 700 and 1000 AD for an audience that delighted in technical accomplishment, and the durable works of Old English verse spring from the source of the English language.

Michael Alexander has translated the best of the Old English poetry into modern English and into a verse form that retains the qualities of Anglo-Saxon metre and alliteration. Included in this selection are the ‘heroic poems’ such as Widsith, Deor, Brunanburh and Maldon, and passages from Beowulf; some of the famous ‘riddles’ from The Exeter Book; all the ‘elegies’, including The Ruin, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Complaint and The Husband’s Message, in which the virtu of Old English is found in its purest and most concentrated form; together with the great Christian poem The Dream of the Rood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141945439
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	07/27/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	399 KB
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

Michael Alexander has retired from the chair of English Literature at the University of St Andrews. For Penguin he has translated The Earliest English Poems (now The First Poems in English) and Beowulf. These verse translations have sold over half a million copies in Penguin, for whom he has also edited Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales: The First Fragment.

Read an Excerpt

Riddle 25

I'm the world's wonder, for I make women happy
I am set well up, stand in a bed,
Swings by his thigh a thing most magical!
Levelling the head of this hanging instrument,
He has often filled it before. Now he fills it again.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Earliest English Poems"
by .
Copyright © 1992 Michael Alexander.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
A Note on the Translation
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Third Edition

The Ruin

Caedmon's Hymn

Bede's Death Song

Heroic Poems
Deor and Widsith
Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg
Waldere

Elegies
The Wanderer and the Seafarer
The Wife's Complaint, the Husband's Message and Wulf and Eadwacer

Gnomic Verses

Riddles

The Dream of the Rood

The Phoenix

Brunaburh

The Battle of Maldon

Map of the Site of the Battle of Maldon
Notes
Appendixes:
A. The Runes
B. Suggested Solutions to the Riddles
C. Anglo-Saxon Metric
Glossary of Proper Names
Further Reading