Table of Contents

List of Vignettes vi

Preface and Acknowledgements vii

Abbreviations xiii

List of Figures xv

1 The Impact of the Norman Conquest 1

2 The Discovery of Anglo‐Saxon England in Tudor Times 49

3 British Antiquaries and the Anglo‐Saxon Past 77

4 The Founding of a Discipline 1600–1700 109

5 A Period of Consolidation 1700–1800 147

6 The Romantics and the Discovery of Old English Verse 186

7 The Triumph of Philology 220

8 Old English Studies in North America 265

9 Anglo‐Saxon England and the Empire 302

Afterword 378

Some Landmark Publications 381

Works Cited 395

Index 415

About the Author

John D. Niles is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. A past president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, he is the author or editor of a dozen books on Old English literature and related topics, including Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition (1983) and Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature (1997).

Reviews

"A cogent and well-written overview of the major authors, artists, scholars, and books that give us our current views of Anglo Saxon England. As such, it is a book worth recommending to colleagues who study later periods. It is also a wonderful introduction to Anglo-Saxonism. Niles is to be congratulated on a welcome and thorough survey."
—Stephen Harris, University of Massachusetts, Modern Philology "One of the highlights of The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England is its well-written, entertaining style. Throughout, Niles displays a keen eye for detail, often highlighting anecdotal, amusing and occasionally shocking facts."
—Thijs Porck, 2016, Review AMSTERDAMER BEITRÄGE ZUR ÄLTEREN GERMANISTIK "The wealth of subject knowledge across a millenium is encycolopaedic; the prose is fresh, witty, easy to read but never casual, and wears its deep learning lightly. In The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England Niles has delivered what will surely be regarded as the must-cite landmark publication for next few decades." (The Review of English Studies Advance Access, 2016)