Celtic and roman Britain

Ethan Frome CELTIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN THE ROMAN PRESENCE Romans have made the first part of British history, when in 55 BC Caesar's legions crossed the channel and started the colonisation of the island. This settlement ended in 44 AD with Claudius; to defend their possession, Romans made an amazing wall at the border, Hadrians's wall. Roman presence signed English history and now we can still find it around the country, for example in the names. Britannia in fact was modelled on the names of its inhabitants, Britons, a group of Celtic people. Celtic has taken another great influence: with their tribes we have a common culture, for example with the monuments and literature, both present in inscriptions where strange characters can be found, the runes. The first invasion after Romans, is dated in 449 where Britons fought against Anglo-Saxon occupation, but they lost and had to retire in Wales, where Celtic is still spoken nowadays: from this event born lots of legends about Arthur the king, very important for literature. ANGLO SAXON BRITAIN THE GERMANIC ELEMENT These new invaders all shared a common Germanic element: they lived in small states, very war like race, where there was no unity; it was an aristocratic society where male dominated. The king was the central of small oligarchy local units, he had to do all the things that were essential in the society better than anyone else: sail a ship, run and so on. Most important of all was life, which had to be risked when there was the necessity: a glorious life had to be sung by a poet to be remembered, making born the epic. Another big kingly virtue was generosity. The absence of unity made British history a succession of wars between small kingdoms. Anyway, a factor that unified Britain is Christianity, which gave an enormous effect on cultural life in general, but especially in literature: in fact this conversion implied a knowledge of written word, in particular the Bible. English language passed through three phases: Old English: from Anglo-Saxon invasion to 1066, Norman Conquest. It was a Germanic language, very inflected (in fact it had cases), and it used some strange letters of an old alphabets, Runes, which came from German and Scandinavian tribes. Middle English: from 1066 to 1600. This phases developed out of Old English in a number of ways: a simplified system of inflection; a vocabulary great enriched from French and Scandinavian sources. Modern English: from 1600 up to now. ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE LATIN AND THE CHURCH Britain was divided into four peoples that were united by one faith and one language: Christianity that brought the idea of written literature, and Latin; these people were ENGLISH - WELSH - PICTS - SCOTS. ORAL LITERATURE There were scribes that were directed to work in Latin to what we now consider the earliest monuments of literary England. Poems have been written down after a long period of oral tradition, in some occasion 200 years later: in fact sometimes we don't e