Cædmon :: Біографія
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Біографія
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Критика
Cædmon the earliest English poet (date of birth unknown; died between 670 and 680). He is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval sources, and one of only three for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived.
The events in the life of this poet are definitively established by the painstaking Bede, who lived in the nearby monastery of Wearmouth in the following generation. Bede tells us (Hist. Eccles., Bk. IV, ch. xxiv) that Caedmon was at first attached as a labourer to the double monastery of Whitby (Streoneshalh), founded in 657 by St. Hilda. He was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but according to Bede learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational religious poet.
Caedmon, having further shown his gift by turning into excellent verse some sacred stories recited to him, yielded to the exhortation of Hilda that he take the monastic habit. He was taught the whole series of sacred history, and then, like a clean animal ruminating, turned it into sweet verse. His poems treated of Genesis, Exodus, and stories from other books of the Old Testament, the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the teaching of the Apostles, the Last Judgment, Hell and Heaven. Bede ends his narrative with an account of Caedmon's holy death. According to William of Malmesbury, writing 1125, he was probably buried at Whithy, and his sanctity was attested by many miracles. His canonization was probably popular rather than formal.
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