Hwæt. That word, barking through the clatter of the mead hall, typically opened an Old English poem in the Dark Ages, and roughly translates to “What” or “Listen now.” Old English is largely Germanic, ...

Students in my history of England class this week are getting their first dose of early English poetry, a brief immersion into their cultural history that, at worst, will do them no harm. Their ...

There are four original manuscripts containing poetry in Old English—the now-defunct language of the medieval Anglo-Saxons—that have survived to the present day. No more, no less. They are: the ...

Recently, I read ``Beowulf,” the oldest epic in English literature and the greatest extant poem in Old English. As is widely known, the poem is about the heroic deeds of Beowulf, his victories over ...

George Herbert’s shaped poetry subtly pushed back against the iconoclasm of the English Reformation Vanessa Braganza - Historian, Harvard University George Herbert’s pictures aren’t just decorative.

I went to college a little bit later than most. Excited but nervous to plunge into a degree — in English literature — that demands all students learn Old English, I asked a friend what studying the ...