Procopius's Old English

By the middle of the sixth century, in Byzantine perspective, Britain had so long since ceased to be part of the empire of the Romans as to have become a kind of never-land, some part of the known world, but also the sort of place of which it was possible to credit the fabulous. Information was scar...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Carlson, David R. 1956- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: De Gruyter 2017
In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift
Year: 2017, Volume: 110, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-28
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Summary:By the middle of the sixth century, in Byzantine perspective, Britain had so long since ceased to be part of the empire of the Romans as to have become a kind of never-land, some part of the known world, but also the sort of place of which it was possible to credit the fabulous. Information was scarce. Nevertheless, the chief source for the sixth-century east-Roman regime in Constantinople, Procopius (c. 500 -565 CE), met a group of Anglo-Saxons c. 540, who were contemporaries of Beowulf’s king Hygelac; and Procopius may have learned from hoi Angiloi something about the Old English poetry, at a particularly important point in its formation, before the beginning of the conversion of the English to Christianity in 597 CE. Procopius’s English informants told him a tale (of the vengeful Anglo-Saxon bride of a Frisian basileos named Radigis) of a type consonant with later examples of Old English poetry; also, with an historical basis that coincides with the historical milieu to which the earliest Old English heroic poetry also refers, including Beowulf.
ISSN:1868-9027
Contains:Enthalten in: Byzantinische Zeitschrift
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1515/bz-2017-0003