Hi,
Are there any Old English experts out there who can give a single word or phrase equivalent to the modern concept of “literature”?
I’m asking on behalf of Miss Marcus who, for her sins, is writing a essay on the subject :dubious: She’s been researching in all the sources she has available at home but not come up with a definitive answer.
Thanks
It’s possible that there really isn’t a word for it. The German in “Literatur”, the Danish is “litteratur”, both obviously derived from Latin. However, the Latin word did not mean “literature”.
The OE poem “Solomon and Saturn” uses the term gebregdstafas which seems to mean something like “cleverness with writing.”
Many thanks. I’ll try gebregdstafas on her! Any further thoughts obviously welcome.
From A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by John Clark Hall, I find a few other options:
Bōc-tǣcung, learning or narrative, written in books.
Stæfcyst, letters, learning from books.
Also, it’s amusing to me that the Anglo-Saxons not only had a word for vomit (spiwoða) but also a word for one who vomits (spiwere, literally “spewer”).
I would expect some form of the word “book” or “writing.”
Why not? They probably had more vomiting than literature.