Anglo-Saxon literature:
Themes :star:= war, battles, fights, mythological stories and creatures/monsters (the supernatural), the fight between good and evil, the heroes and their qualities/values: courage/bravery, kindness, intelligence/cleverness, making sacrifices, strenght, loyalty, wisdom, hopefulness, selflessness, noblety, humility.
Genres: :fire: = epic poems, elegy (poems filled with feelings of sadness, melancholy and themes like loneliness, mysery, pain, passing of time, death)
Style :explode: = alliteration, caesura, kenning (compound metaphors)
examples of kennings:
body = bone-house
sword = battle-light
ship = wave-floater
sea = whale-road
Beowulf: first epic poem in Old English. 
Plot: :!: He's a Scandinavian hero (Scandinavia = Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Scandinavian people are the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons). The story can be divided into 2 parts: in the first part Beowulf fights against a dragon called Grendel and he defeats it; he becomes king for 50 years and then, in the second part, at the end of the poem he fights another dragon; this time he dies (he's old) but he manages to kill the dragon.
Authorship: the poem is anonymous, because it belongs to the oral tradition. It was probably the result of a collective work. There are many Christian elements (like the presence of a God and the afterlife that resembles the realms of heaven and hell).
The main character: he is the embodiment of the qualities of a perfect hero; despite this he's not a flat character, he develops: as he grows older, he becomes more reflective and learns to make sacrifices.