Preface and Acknowledgements

For a number of centuries, the idea of Anglo-Saxon England has haunted the imagination of the English people and of various other peoples of the world. It is an idea that has entered into legal, religious, and constitutional debates, has influenced historians, creative writers, and artists, has been etched into the intellectual history of the northern European countries, and has contributed to the sense of self-worth and the perceived cultural heritage of virtually all those people of the world who identify with England or speak English as their native tongue. In these and in other ways, the idea of Anglo-Saxon England has entered into the thought of successive generations, going far to define, at least in certain times and places, what 'Englishness' itself has been thought to mean.

The idea is not, however, one that has been handed down from high as if by a divine hand. It has been created by a succession of thinkers, and hence it can be seen to be just as ephemeral, dynamic, multifaceted, contingent, and contested as is any other leading idea ever cultivated by humankind.

The present book offers a step-by-step review of the chequered course taken by the idea of Anglo-Saxon England, and by Anglo-Saxon studies as a scholarly discipline, from the early Middle Ages up to the year 1901. That year has been found a suitable stopping point since it was both the date of the King Alfred Millenary held in the city of Winchester - arguably the high point in modern celebrations of the Anglo-Saxons - and the year of Queen Victoria's death, hence the end of a major era. The book presents an account of how the Anglo-Saxon past has entered into both scholarly and popular consciousness from the time of the Anglo-Saxons themselves to the start of the twentieth century. Tracing the changing contours of this story has meant going well back in time, for even though certain scholars of the Elizabethan era are rightly credited with having been the first moderns to decipher Old English texts, it was during the Middle Ages that the notion of Anglo-Saxon identity was first shaped through select acts of remembering, forgetting, and renewing the past. The book as a whole aims to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of 'Anglo-Saxonism', considered as both a focused scholarly enterprise and a broad cultural phenomenon that has persisted for roughly a thousand years, taking on different forms with each passing generation.

The term 'Anglo-Saxonism' perhaps deserves brief comment from the start. One leading scholar in this area, Allen J. Frantzen, has defined Anglo-Saxonism as 'the study of how Anglo-Saxon culture has been used to promote social, intellectual, and political objectives in post-Anglo-Saxon periods, and of how the Anglo-Saxons have been represented in popular genres, including film and new media' (Frantzen 2012: 11). So that the project of the present book is not misunderstood, I should make clear that my own employment of the term is somewhat broader than Frantzen's, for I use it to refer to the ways in which the idea of Anglo-Saxon England has not only been used to promote certain objectives (or what are sometimes called 'agendas'), but has also entered into the basic fabric of thought of succeeding generations. Perhaps controversially, as well, my chronological use of the term extends back to the time of the Anglo-Saxons themselves, rather than just to the period since the Conquest. Moreover, I make no sharp distinction between scholarly and popular representations of the pre-Conquest period, preferring to consider these two aspects of Anglo-Saxonism as exerting mutual influences on one another in a single spectrum of perception and belief. Finally, my use of the term is meant to be neither pejorative nor commendatory; rather, I employ it for its pragmatic value, much as the term 'medievalism' is commonly used today.

Proceeding in a roughly chronological order, though with some movement back and forth in time so as to trace each topic to a satisfactory resting point, the nine chapters of the book review the historical stages by which the field of Anglo-Saxon studies has emerged into something like its present form. The chief reason for this focus on the work of the scholars of earlier generations should perhaps be made explicit. This is that the better one understands the historical basis of any process, the more readily one can intervene in that process in a useful way. Researchers who are familiar with the historical bases of present-day academic discourses are more likely to be aware of their own critical assumptions as well as those of their peers, and hence will be better situated to arrive at independent judgements. Persons who lack such historical awareness, on the other hand, are more likely to be captives of the trends of the moment.

Moreover, the story of how the field of Anglo-Saxon studies gradually emerged into the form it has today is of interest in its own right. Like other good stories, this one involves both heroism and tragedy, both great hopes and grand illusions. Insanity, disappearing persons, exile, intrigue, outlawry, masked identities, sudden deaths, scandals, suicide - such things might seem to pertain to the realm of pulp fiction rather than to the history of scholarship in a dignified field, and yet in fact, as we shall see, they all enter into the making of Anglo-Saxon studies as a discipline. In addition, of course, that same process of disciplinary formation has always depended on the quiet labours of scholars whose work, in a sense, has been their life.

This book's engagement with the history of scholarship pertaining to Anglo-Saxon England, and to the modern recovery of the Old English language and Old English literature, is meant to call attention to the factors that underlie whatever new directions scholars take in this field. In a similar fashion, the book's engagement with Anglo-Saxonism, considered as a set of discourses in either the scholarly or the public domain, is meant to historicise certain attitudes that have proven to be influential at one or another moment in history, thus rendering those attitudes ideologically inert (as much as can be done) and hence subject to insightful critique. Without this exercise in historicism, it might appear that certain habits of thought are somehow natural or inevitable, but such is scarcely the case. In addition, it might falsely seem that the field of Anglo-Saxon studies enjoys some kind of autonomous existence apart from a wider world of thought and action, or apart from the individual persons whose energies, passions, ideas, biases, and personalities have made it what it is. Indeed, the observation that a field of inquiry has wide cultural implications and has been shaped through the efforts of certain individual men and women is potentially a comforting one, for it affirms the possibility that we, too, as thinking persons, can influence future generations through our own endeavours.

Following the lead of many prior scholars as well as looking at the evidence with fresh eyes, I have written this book first of all so as to satisfy my own curiosity about the story of the discovery and invention of the Anglo-Saxon past up to a historical period that people of my generation are likely to think of as more nearly their own. My awareness that my account of that earlier story is incomplete as regards many points of significant interest is matched by my confidence that there are learned persons who will be able to fill it out in greater detail (or who have already done so), pursuing topics that are mentioned here either with lamentable brevity or not at all.

The intended audience of the book is threefold. First of all, I have wanted to make a book of this kind available to younger scholars who are just now staking out a place in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, or who contemplate doing so in the future. I know I would have been grateful, when at a similar stage of my own career, to have had a book such as this in hand, if only so as to quarrel with it from time to time.

In addition, the book is hoped to be of use to scholars working at any level of expertise who wish to situate their research in relation to that of their predecessors. This intended readership includes not just specialists in early medieval England, but also modern cultural historians who wish to gain a better understanding of the role of Anglo-Saxon studies in the shaping of modern attitudes towards the past.

Thirdly, I have had readers in mind who know very little about the Anglo-Saxon period and its modern recovery, and who doubt that they need to know more. I hope to change their minds in that regard. From my own perspective, the story of the remembering, forgetting, deciphering, and renewing of the Anglo-Saxon past is one that anyone with the least interest in the cultural history of the English-speaking peoples of the world ought to find rewarding to know about. This is especially true since the story involves some of the great minds of prior eras, in addition to some of the shallower or more erratic ones. Even those aspects of the story that may seem of no consequence today can be found upon inspection to have a period-specific interest of their own.

The needs of students of literature have been kept uppermost in mind, particularly as regards the development of critical...