AQA A-level English Language – Language Change Practice Test

Beowulf belongs to Old English, the earliest stage of the language used in Anglo-Saxon England from roughly the 5th to the 11th centuries. Its vocabulary is Germanic, its grammar is highly inflected, and it uses alliterative verse with kennings—features that clearly mark that earliest period. The other works sit later in time: The Canterbury Tales is Middle English, Shakespeare writes in Early Modern English, and the King James Bible is also Early Modern English. So Beowulf is associated with Old English.