This article examines emergent Englishness in pre- and post-Conquest literary culture of England. It describes the strategic relation between ethnicity and the past and suggests that during this period Englishness resists any characterization as emergent, instead being found in association with the antique. It argues that hagiography works to transmit ideas about communal integrity by investigating and instantiating the relation between bodily incorruption and the past.
This essay analyzes broad trends in scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Examining the major contributions to the field, the author argues that a change may be observed from a more isolative situation (in which separate scholarly strands examined textual history, literary worth, and political import) concentrated on questions of origin and intent, to the more interdisciplinary focus of contemporary studies, for which readership and continuation are the primary concerns. The essay concludes by suggesting that future study of the Chronicle will be concentrated on the later manuscripts; its nature as a composite text; the manuscript contexts; and the text as narrative.
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