Table Of ContentDesire for Origins
Desire for Origins
New Language; Old English,
and Teaching the Tradition
Allen J. Frantzen
H RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frantzen, Allen JM 1947-
Desire for origins : New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition / Allen
J. Frantzen
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8135-1590-4 (cloth) — ISBN 0-8135-1591-2 (pbk.)
1. English literature—Old English, ca. 450-1100—History and
criticism—Theory, etc. 2. English philology—Old English, ca.
450—1100—Study and teaching. 3. Civilization, Anglo-Saxon—Study
and teaching. 4. Anglo-Saxons—Study and teaching. I. Title.
PR173.F73 1990
829' .09—dc20 90-31077
CIP
British Cataloging-in-Publication information available
Copyright © 1990 by Allen J. Frantzen
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
For George R. Paterson
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Part 1 T eaching th e T rad itio n
1 Desire for Origins: Postmodern Contexts
for Anglo-Saxon Studies 1
2 Origins, Orientalism, and Anglo-
Saxonism in the Sixteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries 27
3 Sources and the Search for Origins
in the Academy 62
Part 2 New Language and O ld E nglish
4 Deconstruction and Reconstruction
of the Origin 99
5 Polemic, Philology, and Anglo-Saxon
Studies in the Renaissance 130
6 Writing the Unreadable Beowulf 168
7 Nationalism, Internationalism, and
Teaching Anglo-Saxon Studies in the
United States 201
Notes 227
Index 253
Preface
This book relates the study of two topics of general interest—
language and history—to a topic that is considered quite specialized:
the role of Anglo-Saxon studies in the postmodern age. I use the term
“postmodern” to designate the variety of relatively recent critical move
ments, known collectively as “literary theory” or “critical theory,” that
preoccupy departments of English. This is an era in which complaints
from the public sector about student reading and writing are com
monplace, implying a significant disparity between the preoccupations
of professors and the needs of their students. Teachers of the English
language and its literature are viewed as working in a highly specialized
system that is carefully divided into elaborate structures of literary pe
riods and genres. “Theory,” understood to be a special subject all its
own, has made these structures even more complex. The need to spe
cialize has narrowed the appeal of literary study, making it seem iso
lated from public understanding and unresponsive to the public’s
concern with the reading and writing skills of college students. In such
an atmosphere, Anglo-Saxon studies (also known as “Old English”)
seem to be a luxury. Yet I consider the study of the early English lan
guage and its culture an opportunity for exactly the kind of work that
higher education is supposed to undertake: making connections across
disciplines and exploring the history and operations of language and
texts.
X P reface
Although this book addresses neither critical theory nor the verbal
skills of students directly, it connects both subjects to the study of Old
English. In the late nineteenth century, philology dominated English
departments in high schools as well as colleges, and Anglo-Saxon lan
guage study was central to the business of higher education. Language
study was the chief business of the department of English, and Old En
glish, included in “Germanic philology” or simply “philology,” was one
of the department’s staple subjects. Departments of English, in their
early manifestations, did not teach literature. Instead, English pro
fessors studied language within the framework of the classical tradi
tion, for traditional humanistic reasons: to encourage the development
of responsible citizens, to promote good character, and so on. Old En
glish literature as it has come to be understood—the heroic world of
Beowulf and the gold and gore of epic poetry—was not then part of the
discipline. Language, including public speaking, was studied as a val
ued part of the cultural tradition; it was not undertaken as a means to
entering specialized realms of literary criticism.
But neither was the discipline thus constituted taken for granted. In
1885, in the very first issue of PMLA, the journal of the Modern Lan
guage Association of America, Francis B. Gummere reported a college
president’s claim that Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, and Quaternions (a
form of calculus) were “intellectual luxuries.” Given the judgment of
“so prominent and learned a man,” Gummere wondered what “that
robust personage, the ‘average citizen,’ impatient as he is of all that is
recondite and out of touch with the practical,” would think of a pro
posal for teaching philology in elementary schools. Nevertheless, Gum
mere assumed “that the fortunes of English Philology in college and
university are no longer doubtful.” Of course he was wrong. Philology
did not become part of the elementary school curriculum, and a cen
tury after he wrote it was rare enough in doctoral programs.1
Although directly descended from the philological tradition that be
gan with classical studies, Anglo-Saxon studies had, long before the
postmodern era (let us say that the era began about 1970), lost nearly all
of their prestige and, for general audiences, most of their value. The
process by which this occurred is easy to trace. First, the study of litera
ture became as important as that of language; then literary criticism
was elevated to parity with language study and soon given precedence
over it. In the meantime, Anglo-Saxon studies, tied to language study
and long indifferent to literary criticism, dwindled into obscurity. To
day many scholars consider Anglo-Saxon the academic heir to the
classics, due for retirement as modern literature becomes the academic
heir to Old English. I submit that a reassessment of Anglo-Saxon stud-
