Niles - The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England 1066-1901 Remembering, Forgetting, Deciphering, and Renewing the Past

1. Chapter 01
2. Chapter 02
3. Chapter 03
4. Chapter 04
5. Chapter 05
6. Chapter 06
7. Chapter 07
8. Chapter 08
9. Chapter 09
   1. Figure 9.16 History Repeats Itself. Cartoon from Punch, September 18, 1901, on the occasion of the King Alfred Millenary. All was not high seriousness as the dignitaries converged on Winchester to pay tribute to King Alfred as the founder of practically all good things. The caption reads as follows:
      Mistress. How is this, Mary? Reading and the cakes burning in the oven!
      Mary. Very sorry, Mum; but I was so interested in King Alfreds millinery!
      The maid seems to have trouble distinguishing millinery the designing and manufacturing of hats from millenary, meaning in this instance the designing and manufacturing of myths about a Saxon king. Photo courtesy of the Library of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

John D. Niles

This edition first published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Niles, John D., author.
The idea of Anglo-Saxon England 10661901 : remembering, forgetting, deciphering, and renewing the past / John D. Niles.
pagescm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-94332-8 (cloth)
1.Anglo-SaxonsHistoriography.2.English philologyOld English, ca. 450-1100History.3.Great BritainHistoryAnglo-Saxon period, 449-1066Historiography.I.Title.
DA129.5.N55 2015
942.01072dc23
2015008734

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Statue of King Alfred the Great, Winchester, 1901. Photograph by the author.

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 Victorias 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.