The undeveloped image: Anglo-Saxon in popular consciousness from Turner to Tolkien

Abstract

A recent volume of essays, edited by Allen Frantzen and John Niles, has as its title Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity . It is the purpose of this essay to argue that Anglo-Saxon studies, if not Anglo-Saxonism, have been affected increasingly over the last two centuries by the destruction, or rather the repression, of social identity for one particular group: a repression the more ironic for having been practised on the group which, in another recent opinion, that of Adrian Hastings, in fact gave the initial model for all later ‘constructions of nationhood’ – the English. My argument starts with a comment made in an earlier work by Allen Frantzen, his 1990 study, Desire for Origins . Almost at the end of this, Frantzen remarks that his book has been based on the premise ‘that the place of Anglo-Saxon studies in modern intellectual life is marginal’. Given the evidence that Frantzen adduces, there can be little doubt that this premise is correct. Two points might however be added to it. One is that this marginality ought to be surprising rather than taken for granted (an argument pursued below). The other is that if anything Frantzen's summation is an understatement. Within academia, especially American academia, ‘marginal’ may well be a fair description.