1. 1- Old English literature: 450-1153
The first works written in Old English appeared in the early Middle Ages. The oldest surviving text is the Hymn of Cædmon. Oral tradition was omnipresent in early English culture; Hence epic poems were very popular. Many poems like Beowulf, have survived anonymously to the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature that resemble today's Icelandic, Norwegian, North Frisian and the Northumbrian and Scots English dialects of modern English. Much Old English verse is adapted from the earlier Germanic war poems and the German feature of alliterative verse, which helped the memorization and oral transmission of literature from one generation to another. But the first written literature dates to the early Christian monasteries founded by Augustine of Canterbury and his disciples to suit the needs of Christian readers