This book is a revised and supplemented edition of the monograph "Sword and Lyre: Anglo-Saxon Society in History and Epic" (M., 1987). The book is dedicated to Old English heroic epic poetry and the ideal world in which its heroes live and act. It examines works of different genres: the heroic epic itself, elegies, poems on biblical subjects and historical songs in their correlation with the heroic world of the Anglo-Saxons. He is born and finds the most complete embodiment in the epic, to him? the past? the present elegy is opposed, under its influence the biblical narrative is transformed, the heroes of historical songs try to follow its ideals. The book can be of interest and be useful for medievalists, historians of literature and culture, folklorists, as well as everyone who is interested in the Middle Ages.