The warlike ideal

1. The warlikeideal p. 22 Millennium 1

2. STUDY QUESTIONS • What did the ‘warlike ideal’ imply? • It implied that the king had to be better than anyone else in doing things both in everyday life and in battle; he had to be valiant and ready to die in battle. The king strove not only after simple success, but after enduring fame. This could be achieved only through glorious deeds later sung by a poet, a scop. • What role did women have in Germanic society? • Women had to submit to men completely. • What can you say about the scop? • A scop was an Anglo-Saxon poet who recited his poems aloud from memory and moved from court to court. • What was the poetic genre of Anglo –Saxon literature? Why? Which specimen has survived? • The poetic genre was the epic, because it sang of heroic deeds. A specimen of Anglo-Saxon epic is “Beowulf”. (= long poem about gods and great men and women) written in the 8th century in Old English, about a man called Beowulf who kills powerful frightening creatures and becomes a king.

3. STUDY QUESTIONS • When and how did Christianity spread over England? • Christianity spread quickly all over England, after the arrival St Augustine of Canterbury in 597. By the second half of the 7th century England was for the greater part a Christian country. • What effect did this have on literature and art? • The new religion brought along Latin and the idea of written literature. Anglo-Saxon writers such as the Venerable Bede, a monk from Northumbria, achieved continental fame. Churches and monasteries played a pivotal role in the world of art: they were essential for the illumination of manuscripts, sculptures, painting and architecture.