Excavating the borders of literary anglo-saxonism in nineteenth-century Britain and Australia

Authors

Louise D'Arcens, University of WollongongFollow
Chris Jones, University of St Andrews

RIS ID

83993

Publication Details

D'Arcens, L. and Jones, C. (2013). Excavating the borders of literary anglo-saxonism in nineteenth-century Britain and Australia. Representations, 121 (1), 85-106.

Abstract

Comparing nineteenth-century British and Australian Anglo-Saxonist literature enables a "decentered" exploration of Anglo-Saxonism's intersections with national, imperial, and colonial discourses, challenging assumptions that this discourse was an uncritical vehicle of English nationalism and British manifest destiny. Far from reflecting a stable imperial center, evocations of "ancient Englishness" in British literature were polyvalent and self-contesting, while in Australian literature they offered a response to colonization and emerging knowledge about the vast age of Indigenous Australian cultures.