Anglo-Saxon literature) encompasses literature written in Old English during the 600year Anglo-Saxon period of England, from the

mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Anglo-Saxon Literature was founded in a time period where reading and writing didn't exist. Instead this literature was passed down through stories and poems. In the world of Anglo-Saxon Literature, there were two popular types of poetry. Heroic and Elegiac poetry are to very different but important types of literature. During this time, the great battles fought by brilliant leaders were highly appreciated. These battles were so appreciated that during the teaching of the Anglo-Saxon Literature, the battles were told from generation to generation. This type of poetry was called heroic poetry, the achievements of warriors involved in great battles. The other type of poetry commonly performed was elegiac poetry. This poetry involved the sorrowful laments mourning the deaths of loved ones and the loss of the past. Although very different, Heroic and Elegiac showed the good and the bad that came out of the era of Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon Literature include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons,Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. A large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during the last 300 years (9th to 11th centuries), in both Latin and the vernacular. There were considerable losses of manuscripts as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th Old English manuscripts have been highly prized by collectors since the 16th century, both for their historic value and for their aesthetic beauty of uniformly spaced letters and decorative elements: There are four major poetic manuscripts:

The Junius manuscript, also known as the man hunt, is an illustrated collection of poems on biblical narratives. The Exeter Book, is an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th century. The Vercelli Book, contains both poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be in Vercelli. The Beowulf Manuscript (British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv), sometimes called the Nowell Codex, contains prose and poetry, typically dealing with monstrous themes,

Most Old English poets are anonymous, and only four names are known with any certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf.: Caedmon is considered the first Old English poet whose work still survives. According to the account in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, he lived at the abbey of Whitby in Northumbria in the 7th century. Only his first poem, comprising nine-lines, Cdmon's Hymn, remains, albeit in Northumbrian, West-Saxon and Latin versions that appear in 19 surviving manuscripts

Bede is often thought to be the poet of a five-line poem entitled Bede's Death Song, on account of its appearance in a letter on his death by Cuthbert. This poem exists in a Northumbrian and later version. Alfred is said to be the author of some of the metrical prefaces to the Old English translations of Gregory's Pastoral Care and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. Alfred is also thought to be the author of 50 metrical psalms, but whether the poems were written by him, under his direction or patronage, or as a general part in his reform efforts is unknown. Cynewulf has proven to be a difficult figure to identify, but recent research suggests he was from the early part of the 9th century to which a number of poems are attributed includingThe Fates of the Apostles and Elene (both found in the Vercelli Book), and Christ II and Juliana (both found in the Exeter Book). Among the most important works of this period are "Widsith," Cdmon's Hymn and"Beowulf," which has achieved national epic status in England. Widsith is Old English poem, probably from the 7th century, that is preserved in the Exeter Book, a 10th-century collection of Old English poetry. Widsith is an idealized self-portrait of a scop (minstrel) of the Germanic heroic age who wandered widely and was welcomed in many mead halls, where he entertained the great of many kingdom Cdmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem originally composed by Cdmon, in honour of God the Creator. It survives in a Latin translation by Bede s. Beowulf, a complete epic, is the oldest surviving Germanic epic as well as the longest and most important poem in Old English. It originated as a pagan saga transmitted orally from one generation to the next; court poets known as scops were the bearers of tribal history and tradition. The version of Beowulf that is extant was composed by a Christian poet, probably early in the 8th cent. However, intermittent Christian themes found in the epic, although affecting in themselves, are not integrated into the essentially pagan tale. The epic celebrates the hero's fearless and bloody struggles against monsters and extols courage, honor, and loyalty as the chief virtues in a world of brutal force.