N A R ■ PAST PERFECT Anglo-Saxonism and the Average American WENDY MARIE HOOFNAGLE “Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature” The language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons must ever be a subject of lively and enduring interest to the descendants of that race, wherever scattered abroad over the manypeopled globe. Wherever the English tongue is spoken, this parent language deserves to be studied by those who would acquire a thorough knowledge of that tongue. To Englishmen, and their offspring in every land, the Anglo-Saxon is precisely what the Latin is to the Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese, or the Icelandic to the modern inhabitants of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Doubtless, the original language of England has received, in its passage through the long tract of time, great accessions of strength and riches from the tributary streams of Norman, French, and Latin; but its sturdiest roots are to be looked for and found in the Anglo-Saxon. Even the mere beauty of its idiom has often been impaired by these foreign accessions. . . . Still we often find even the best writers and speakers using words and idioms of Latin and French origin, where those of Anglo-Saxon growth would have far more force and beauty. This tendency can only be corrected by a knowledge of the primitive tongue spoken and written by our ancestors not only before, but after the Norman conquest, when the Romanz or langue d’ouil, introduced by the English kings of the Norman line as the language of the court and the law, was justly considered by their English subjects as a hateful badge of slavery. The study of the Anglo-Saxon may, therefore, be considered as essential to a complete knowledge of modern English. From the North American Review, October 1831, Volume 33, Issue 73, pp. 325-51. THE UPWELLING OF ANGLOPHILIA IN THE United States was a curious phenomenon of the antebellum period, further bolstered by the Romantic Movement that revered a fancifully imagined AngloSaxon past. In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain placed the blame for the fate of the postwar South–even for the Civil War itself–squarely at the feet of that most Romantic of novelists, Sir Walter Scott. Certainly, Twain was exaggerating for dramatic effect, but his point remains: the idealistic vision of AngloSaxon society that writers like Scott championed would have far-reaching effects on both sides of the “pond.” This interest in all things English would express itself in the late nineteenth century as Anglo-Saxon racism and engender some of the darkest moments in our nation’s history, but in 1831, Anglo-Saxonism seemed a noble and worthy infatuation indeed. The rhetoric of this essay resembles strikingly that of Scott’s Ivanhoe, with its blushing praise of the “sturdy roots” of Anglo-Saxon language and culture. According to this interpretation of history, the Anglo-Saxon heritage would eventually throw off the Norman yoke, which sought to subjugate the simple nobility of the Saxon people to the decadent excesses of the insufferable French. Romantic writers were not the first to gaze nostalgically upon the Anglo-Saxon past; the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, wrote in imitation of the verse style of pre-Conquest writers during the so-called “Alliterative Revival” of the fourteenth century. (It is ironic that this same century gave us Chaucer, touted as the father of English literature, but one who looked to the Continent for much of his own inspiration.) In the early twenty-first century, the attraction of Anglo-Saxon subjects is alive and well in popular culture, particularly its penchant for pseudomedieval English fantasy. The entertainment juggernaut of the Lord of the Rings film series, based on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien (himself a well-respected AngloSaxon scholar), renewed our fascination, evident also in the recent Zemeckis cinematic interpretation of the Old English epic poem, Beowulf. In recent years, more American scholars are realizing what this essay suggested nearly two centuries ago, that the “study of the Anglo-Saxon [language] may . . . be considered as essential to a complete knowledge of modern English.” As speakers of modern English, our very way of thinking is shaped by our language and the cultural values it reflects. A more thorough understanding of our mother tongue connects us to this ancient community, in resolute defiance of a modern society that judges the past according to its own values and finds it wanting. It exposes a world that is at once exotic and comfortably familiar. The idea of reading itself is derived from the Old English word ræd, which means “to give advice or counsel.” The sharing of information can transcend time like treasured manuscripts that have been passed from generation to generation. In our interactive e-world, we can be closer to the ideal of the Anglo-Saxon intellectual community than ever before. All the same, without an attentive reading of the past, the modern world runs the risk of alienating the wisdom of history. Instead, we must be like Janus, the twoheaded Roman god of beginnings and endings: perpetually looking forward, while keeping a keen eye on the past. PAST PERFECT showcases today’s experts on notable items from the NAR’s almost 200 years of back pages. The item excerpted at left may be read in full at Cornell University’s Making of America web site at <http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/moa_browse.html>. September–October 2008 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 49