ENGLISH

Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature

Book information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2003
ISBN
9780415968720, 0415968720, 0203497996, 9780203497999, 9780203606193
LCC
PR179.R32 H37 2003
Open Library ID
OL3675122M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (3228583 bytes)
Series
Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 24
Pages
298\314
Topic
Literature
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

What makes English literature English ? This question inspires Stephen Harris's wide-ranging study of Old English literature. From Bede in the eighth century to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth, Harris explores the intersections of race and literature before the rise of imagined communities. Harris examines possible configurations of communities, illustrating dominant literary metaphors of race from Old English to its nineteenth-century critical reception. Literary voices in the England of Bede understood the limits of community primarily as racial or tribal, in keeping with the perceived divine division of peoples after their languages, and the extension of Christianity to Bede's Germanic neighbours was effected in part through metaphors of family and race. Harris demonstrates how King Alfred adapted Bede in the ninth century; how both exerted an effect on Archbishop Wulfstan in the eleventh; and how Old English poetry speaks to images of race.

Similar books