These characters are from Beowulf. Grendel is the monster that Beowulf fights to avenge the destruction of Heorot; Wiglaf is a young warrior and follower of Beowulf; Hrothgar is the king of the Danes and lord of Heorot; and Breca is a childhood friend of Beowulf.

The Pearl Poet is another name for the Gawain Poet, an anonymous author who is thought to have written the fourteenth-century poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. A classic Arthurian narrative, this poem is a chivalric romance that follows the adventures of Sir Gawain.

The Exeter Book, a tenth-century codex of Anglo-Saxon poetry, contains nearly a hundred riddles on various subjects. While the Exeter Book is also known for its lyric elegies, it is important to remember that the manuscript contains an important variety of secular writings and is one of the best known sources of extant early English poetry. 

Written in the late 1300s, this poem is titled Piers Plowman and is widely considered one of the most important works of Middle English literature. Langland used unrhymed alliterative verse to develop his satirical religious allegory featuring three men, Dobest, Dobet, and Dowel.

Passage adapted from Piers Plowman, l.1-10

Beowulf, one of the most important works of Old English literature, features the characters Scyld the Scefing, Hrothgar, Grendel, and the eponymous Beowulf of the Geats. The epic poem begins with the monster Grendel attacking Hrothgar’s mead-hall, Heorot, and follows Beowulf as he seeks vengeance.

Passage adapted from Beowulf l.1-11 (trans. Leslie Hall, 1892)

The Faerie Queene, published in the 1590s by Edward Spenser, includes an Arthurian plotline and various religious allegories. The poem is distinguishable by its nine-line Spenserian stanzas, which follows an ABABBCBCC rhyme scheme, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last in iambic hexameter.

Passage adapted from The Faerie Queene I.i.1.1-9 (1590)

This excerpt from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is, like the rest of the work, unafraid to poke fun at idealized notions of romance. This particular passage is taken from the Wife of Bath's Tale. Chaucer’s poetry is distinguishable by its Middle English and The Canterbury Tales in particular can be identified by any mentions of its more famous characters, including the Wife of Bath, the Knight, the Miller, and the Reeve.

Passage adapted from the Prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale" l.371-378 in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1475)

Translated by Ezra Pound, these are the opening lines of the anonymous 11^th-century poem The Seafarer. The first-person poem appears in the Exeter Book, a canonical anthology of early poetry.

Passage adapted from The Seafarer l.1-8 (trans. Pound 1911)