British Historical Events

YEA
R
449

537

106
6

117
1

121
5
134
8
138
1
148
5

HISTORICAL EVENT
During this year, the biginning of Old
English was marked by the invasion of
Britain by the Angles, Saxons, Julets, and
Frisians.
King Arthur, who led the defense of Britain
against Saxon invaders, died.
The beginning of a century of invasion
started with the Vikings invading Britain.
English invaders were defeated by Norse
invaders in northeastern England. Also,
the Norman Conquest occurred when
the British army was defeated by
invaders from Normandy, causing
William the Conqueror to be crowned as
the king of England, changing Englands
language and culture forever.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
Becket, was assassinated. He is venerated
as saint. He gained conflict with King Henry
II because of the rights and privileges of the
Church.
The Magna Carta was signed, in which the
protection of rebel barons was claimed,
asking for peace between the barons and
the King.
Black Death arrived to England, which was
one of the most devastating pandemics in
human history, causing the death of almost
200 million people in Europe.
The so called Peasants Revolt, led by Wat
Tyler, occurred. Some of the causes of the
revolt were the socio-economic and political
tensions generated by the Black Death.
The last battle of the War of Roses, civil war
between the Houses of Lancaster and York,
happened. The last Plantagenet king was
killed and Henry VII was crowned

British Literary Events

YEA
R
449

670

700

760

110
0
134
2
137
8
138
0
147
5

LITERARY EVENT
Roman and Persians myths merged
with Celtic and Germanic myths,
becoming the base for most of western
literature.
The earliest English Christian poet
Caedmon of the Anglo-Saxon,
composed Hymn which is one of the
earliest attested examples of written
Old English and one of the earliest
recorded examples of sustained poetry
in a Germanic language
Beowulf is composed in Old English. It
was considered the longest epic poem
written in that language. The story tells
the struggle between the hero,
Beowulf, and a bloodthirsty monster
called Grendel.
Monks began writing the Book of Kells,
which was a manuscript gospel in Latin,
containing the four Gospels of the New
Testament.
The Mabinogion is written, which was
the earliest prose literature in Britain.
Julian of Norwich, one of the first know
English women in letters, was born.
The legendary Robin Hood appears. He
was portrayed for robbing from the rich
and giving to the poor.
For the first time ever, the Bible is
translated into English language.
William Caxton prints first book in
England: Recuyell of the Histories of
Troye which was a translation made by
Caxton himself

Analysis
To

understand

the

development

of

English

Literature, we need to first analyze the OLD

English literature. If we see the timelines of the
first pages of this homework, we can see that
the first event that marked England significantly
was the invasion of a Germanic tribe (also known
as the Saxons) to the British lands. As they
settled scholars believe that they had no writing
until they learned some Latin from Roman
missionaries. Before the earliest written works in
Old English were written, the piece was probably
composed orally and then was passed through
speak. Even when we know some of the writers
from this era, for example Caedmon, some of the
works

remain anonymous.

English literature

grew and then was characterized for being

mostly epic poetry, sermons, Bible translations,
chronicles, riddles and many others. Old English
was influenced also by other languages such as
Latin; Old Norse, which helped English move
from a synthetic language to a more analytic

word order; and even the Vikings language

show its influence in indispensable elements of
language producing a friction that led to the
erosion of the complicated inflectional wordendings. As we can see lots of things made Old
English Literature develop, and with time many
other aspects built the language we now know.