ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Today is the feast day of Caedmon, the first known English poet. As well as being the first named poet in the English literary tradition, he is also a significant figure in the history of people who hate singing in public, people who develop new talents later in life, and of cowherds.

Detailed explanation-2: -Caedmon, (flourished 658–680), first Old English Christian poet, whose fragmentary hymn to the creation remains a symbol of the adaptation of the aristocratic-heroic Anglo-Saxon verse tradition to the expression of Christian themes.

Detailed explanation-3: -Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream.

Detailed explanation-4: -Two known poets from this period are Caedmon, considered the first Old English Christian poet, and Cynewulf. Old English poetry has survived almost entirely in four manuscripts: the Exeter Book, the Junius Manuscript, the Vercelli Book, and the Beowulf manuscript.