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Histories and surveys of Old English literature: a chronological review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Daniel G. Calder
Daniel G. Calder
Affiliation:
The University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

Literary history emerges when critical readers in sufficient number move beyond primary recognition of individual texts into a secondary awareness of a scheme, a sense of the connections that exist between these texts.1 Literary history considers the development of a whole body of literature, tracing multifarious influences and innovations through time. In the course of Anglo-Saxon studies the slow and sporadic reappearance of the literary remains resulted in the late nourishing of a schematic or historical overview. As Wellek reminds us, ‘the antiquarian study of Anglo-Saxon remained…outside the main tendency towards literary history’2 that occurred in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century England. So, too, the special quality of Old English poetry itself contributed to the laggard creation of a history. It is difficult to map the path of a literature in which all dating is only good guessing and in which a tenaciously conservative oral—formulaic style makes attempts at suggesting influence hazardous.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 10 , December 1981 , pp. 201 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Or, as René Wellek puts it: ‘Genuine literary history became possible only when two main concepts began to be elaborated: individuality and development’ (The Kite of English Literary History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941), p. 25).Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 22.

3 See Bale, John, lllustrium majoris Britanniae scriptorum…Summarium (Ipswich, 1548)Google Scholar, and Leland, John, Commentarii de Scriptoribus Briltamcis, ed. Antonius, Hall (Oxford, 1709).Google Scholar

4 Phillips's, Edward ‘History of the Literature of England and Scotland’ (a translation from the Compendiosa Enumeratio Poetarum), ed. Calder, Daniel G. and Forker, Charles R., Salzburg Stud. in Eng. Lit. (Salzburg, 1973), p. 42.Google Scholar

5 Kemble, John M., ‘Letter to M. Francisque Michel’, Francisque Michel, Bibliotbèque Anglo-Saxonne (Paris and London, 1837), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

6 See Stanley, E. G., The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge, 1975; repr. of articles originally published in N∧Q 209–10 (1964–1965)).Google Scholar

7 A History of English Literature in a Series of Lectures by Lafcadio Hearn [1900–3] (Tokyo, 1927) I, 20–1.Google Scholar

8 Ibid. p. 35.

9 Paul, Hermann, Grundriss dergermanischen Philologie, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Strassburg, 1901–1909) II, 941–1134.Google Scholar

10 This misreading goes back to Stephens, George, The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England (London, Copenhagen and Lund, 1866–1901), 1, 419–20.Google Scholar

11 I should like to express my great appreciation of the genetous and painstaking assistance Peter Clemoes and Stanley B. Greenfield have given to the writing of this essay. 1 should like also to thank Professors Greenfield and Fred C. Robinson for allowing me to use parts of their forthcoming bibliography. This has greatly facilitated the task of tracing the many volumes.