The Battle of Maldon: a magnifying glass over the Anglo-Saxon world

Abstract

Although an unexpectedly lot of information has survived from such an early period as the Anglo-Saxon, this information is rather unevenly scattered throughout the whole of historic sources. It is uneven regarding the subject matter, the periods of time and the regions of England it refers to, and there are still a lot of gaps to be completed and a lot of questions to be answered. That is why the anonymous heroic poem The Battle of Maldon stands out as a reference within its genre. Not only does it represent an extraordinary piece of Old English literature, but it also enlightens an event which would have otherwise remained obscure. In these terms, the present paper aims to explore how the Anglo-Saxon world and the battle itself are reflected in the poem. Assuming the fact that there is an inherent relation between a historic text and the context in which it has been produced, in the sense that they clarify each other, the study will first present a general overview of England of that time, with its social, cultural and religious characteristics, and this will be followed by an analysis of the text and how this reveals aspects of the Anglo-Saxon life.