Textological analysis shows that the epic poem of Beowulf (the title itself is an editorial convenience – the manuscript copy of the poem is untitled) probably existed in written form by the middle of the 7th century, so it belongs to the oldest records of the English literature. It is the longest surviving poem in […]

I. Old English (500-1100 AD) West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began populating the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian—the language of northeastern region […]