Guthlac Poems A and B

Guthlac Poems A And B

Guthlac A and Guthlac B are a pair of Anglo-Saxon poems written in celebration of the deeds and death of Saint Guthlac of Croyland, a popular Mercian saint. The two poems are presented consecutively in the important Exeter Book miscellany of Old English poetry, the fourth and fifth items in the manuscript. They are clearly intended to be considered two items, judging from the scribe's use of large initials at the start of each poem.

The two poems are believed to be derived from Felix's Latin life of St. Guthlac, the Vita Sancti Guthlaci, written sometime between 730 and 740. (An Anglo-Saxon version of the life can be found among the Vercelli Homilies.)

The poems, like the majority of extant Anglo-Saxon verse, are composed in alliterative meter, with four strong stresses per line, three of which must alliterate. Early editors posited that one or both of the poems could have been composed by the poet Cynewulf, but neither poem is numbered among that writer's compositions today.