from Part I - Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
Across diverse medieval historical writings, the Anglo-Saxon period was envisioned as a coherent historical era and as a paradigm of England’s political and ethical potential. Starting with Bede and continuing through the twelfth-century Latin chroniclers, those writers invested in a providential historiography presented the Anglo-Saxons as a perfected people whose achievements the present should try to regain. Although Geoffrey of Monmouth’s vision of dastardly Saxons in the History of the Britons disrupted this narrative, it did not displace it; even late medieval writers sympathetic to Geoffrey’s Britons might depict the Anglo-Saxons as morally desirable. The mythos of the holy, just Anglo-Saxons was widespread in vernacular writings as well, from chronicle to romance to hagiography. This largely imaginary picture of an ethical “Anglo-Saxon future” was inherited by the sixteenth-century religious polemicists and continues to be felt in contemporary politics.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.