Investigation into the importance of the Anglo-Saxon past in medieval literature.
As the point of origin, both real and imagined, of English law and group identity, the Anglo-Saxon past was important in the construction of a post-Conquest English society that was both aware of, and placed great stock in, its Anglo-Saxon heritage; yet its depiction in post-Conquest literature has been very little studied. This book examines a wide range of sources (legal and historiographical as well as literary) in order to reveal a ‘social construction’ of Anglo-Saxon England that held a significant place in the literary and cultural imagination of the post-Conquest English. Using a variety of texts, but the Matter of England romances in particular, the author argues that theyshow a continued interest in the Anglo-Saxon past, from the localised East Sussex legend of King Alfred that underlies the twelfth-century
Proverbs of Alfred, to the institutional interest in the
Guy of Warwick narrative exhibited by the community of St. Swithun’s Priory in Winchester during the fifteenth century; they are part of a continued cultural remembrance that encompasses chronicles, folk memories, and literature.
Dr ROBERT ALLLEN ROUSE teaches in the Department of English, University of British Columbia.
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ROBERT ROUSE Associate Professor, Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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