Session 4: Religious Poetry

Alcuin of York An Anglo-Saxon scholar (d. 804) who worked as a teacher at Charlemagne’s court in the 780s and 790s and was a prominent agent behind the Carolingian Renaissance
Caedmon Allegedly the first Anglo-Saxon poet to sing on Christian subject matter
Ingeld A character of Anglo-Saxon heroic legend, invoked by Alcuin as a representative of the heroic tradition contrasting with the sacred literature that ought to be read at the priestly dinner
Junius 11 The only one among the four poetic codices to contain illustrations, alongside the poems Genesis A and B, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan
Typology The reading of narratives on nonliteral as well as literal levels, in which the literal types are seen to have nonliteral antitypes. In the Middle Ages, it was common to discern four levels in Scripture: history (i.e. the literal account), allegory (the foreshadowing of events in salvation history), tropology (moral lessons for the individual believer), and anagogy (information about the end times and the hereafter).