LITERATURE OF THE OLD ENGLISH AND THE OLD IRISH PERIODS (600-1100 A.D.)

1- OLD ENGLISH HISTORY AND LANGUAGE
Initial literatures are spoken and that oral literature have been many amplifications, later appear the texts. Beowulf was oral first and then became written. There are lots of fragments written literally. Some texts were lost and now we only have fragments. These texts are writing in manuscripts, there weren’t books in that period. In particular there are four manuscripts that contain most of English literature: Cotton Vitelius, Exeter Book, Junius Manuscript and Vercelli Manuscript; they are from 10th century. However the poetry and the texts contain the literature from 9th century, but they originated in 7th century orally (all of them originated orally before they appear written).
That manuscripts tell some things about the society of this period of time, so we know details of this century. This period is the Anglo-Saxon period, before them there were the Britons who were invaded by some different people. They spoke different dialects of old English, the stronger kingdom was Wessex, which dialect was the most important and it called “west saxon”. Beowulf was writing in this dialect.
In 597 appeared the Christianization. This means that the English became Christian, it became familiar with the church language: Latin. Latin is the culture language. The entry of Christianity is the entry of the culture in Britain.

2- WRITTEN RECORDS OF THE ANGLOSAXON PERIOD
English began to be written when the Christianity arrived. Before that they had a writing system, they used the German alphabet: runic alphabet, to the 6th century. In Europe this system is known with the name futhark, but in England is known as futhork. The runes of this alphabet are similar to Chinese letters and they are epigraphic. They carved in wood… each letters means something. All