(Re-)Writing History: Literature as Historiography and the Construction of an Anglo-Saxon Literary Imaginary

When the early medieval English past does surface in contemporary culture, it often does so with less than savory effects. Nationalist and white supremacist groups invoke Old English literature in their reading materials, far-right politicians ground their policies in “Anglo-Saxon” history and institutions, and academic historians make mainstream news headlines with contentious debates over abandoning racist terminology. One of the reasons why untangling the ideologically fraught narratives of this period has been such a tumultuous project is that narratives of national origin and identity are not simply “misappropriations” of history, but a manifestation of an orientation towards that history that is equally evident in much of the academic scholarship on the period. By attempting to critique one form of narrative while reifying the other, an epistemological crisis unfolds in which scholars attempt to prove the invalidity of certain historical narratives through the use of methodologies that are themselves based on those very narratives. This dissertation argues that the dominant narrative of the early medieval English past is one rooted in nationalist origin myths that posit a definition of Englishness reliant on race-based articulations of an “Anglo-Saxon” identity, and that this narrative is perpetuated just as powerfully through literature as through academic historical and political discourses. This Anglo-Saxon literary imaginary entrenches variations on a single narrative of racial supremacy as the only historically valid interpretation of the early medieval English past, suppressing any evidence or interpretation that may counter that narrative. Literary history is particularly situated to critique this imagined past because its interest is not on the veracity of particular facts, but the way in which narratives of the past are constructed in historical discourse.