The most significative form of poetry in AngloSaxon world is the epic poem “Beowulf”. It was written with a language that is not used today and for this reason, Sheamus Heaniy translated it in a standard English.

The epic poem tells the actions of a hero, someone capable to remind to some values that were considered important for the community.

Since the first poetry experiences, the AngloSaxon poetry used an alliterative lines. As a result the level of sound resulted so important because the poems were handed down in oral way. The chosen words used the kanning and it must be comprensible to common people. All epic poems had to record a civility culture and so reading epic poetry you can understand the history of a population and its values. Any historical period has different points of view reflecting values of a civilty.

In the Middle Ages popular poetry, like Anglosaxon ones, made a great improvement on the level of sound. Indeed ballads are oral forms of poetry and so they must use a simple language and sound to be able to be remembered and danced. In addition phonological instruments, like the rhyme, the incremental repetition, the alliteration, the assonance and the consonance were essential in poetic texts. Ballads argumentation is extremely easy. They talk about tragic loves, sovranatural and fights between Scotland and Britain population. In ballads the setting atmosphere is so important: it is generally nostalgic and sad. The structure is arranged with dialogues and narration. It is worth saying to make the language used simple. Indeed words are generally concrete because poets refer to analphabet people. In the Middle Ages the most representative poet was Geoffrey Chaucer, that is consider the poet of poets. He wrote “The Canterbury Tales” and he used the characterization of pilgrims to present different social classes.