The Caedmon Poems: A Verse Translation of Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry

Cædmon is the first English poet whose name survives; thus he stands at the beginning of our literature. In Bede’s famous account, Cædmon’s nine-line Genesis hymn brought traditional oral poetry into the realm of writing some time in the latter half of the seventh century. Over the next four hundred years, a series of anonymous poets took up his challenge, producing the richest corpus of literature to emerge from early medieval Europe. High among their achievements are the works of those who followed Cædmon’s example and rewrote the stories of the Old Testament for their own time, combining Germanic tradition with the Christianity of the Mediterranean world to create vivid new renditions of the great Bible narratives. In Exodus, Genesis B, and Judith they produced masterpieces that rank beside Beowulf as monuments of the era.

This book is the first to represent the Old Testament genre comprehensively in modern English verse translation, making it available to students and non-specialist readers in a form that captures much of the vigor and rhythmic texture of the original poems.

An extensive Introduction and Explanatory Notes aid access to these unique artefacts of the early medieval world