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Old English Then And Title Old English Then and Now Description This final lecture looks briefly at how Old English has been reused by modern writers, but specifically at how the Anglo-Saxons have been portrayed on film, and what film studies can do to help us enjoy Old English poetry. Presenter(s) Stuart Lee Recording http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/engfac/oldenglish/lee05-medium-audio.mp3 Keywords old english, runes, middle earth, medieval, anglo-saxon, film, genre, Q321, Q310, 1 Part of series An Introduction to Old English Contributor Thank you very much. Thank you for coming to this final lecture in Old English and this, there isn’t a hand out by the way so don’t worry about looking for one. This is kind of the relaxing lecture; it’s a bit like that last week in school used to be when you could bring your games in. It’s taking on a light motif I suppose. Really what I am trying to do here is look at Old English and the Anglo Saxons but particularly Old English, what happens to it after the period and try and make a few points about its cultural relevance. So the objective here really is to make some preliminary remarks about history, I’m not going to define history as a subject, I just want to make a couple of remarks about it because it ties into what you are going to see and read. I then want to look at how Old English and how the Anglo Saxons have been picked up and used or misused throughout the ages and particularly ending with modern day perceptions of the Anglo Saxons and as you will see towards the end of the lecture, really looking at film studies and trying to bring the two together with the aim of showing its relevance. But if we want to be particularly spot on what I am trying to do is demonstrate the inaccuracy of the following statement. This is an article which cites a commentator who is discussing Old English and the commentator said that Old English was educationally, linguistically, historically a cul de sac, a wearisome, philological diversion from the broad current of English literature rather than a central part of it. In this commentator’s argument the language has no essential kinship with our own, the themes and concerns in literature have left no trace on ours and the very term Old English implying that such a connection exists is spurious. And it may surprise you that that came from a member of this English faculty. Or to put it more bluntly as Kinsley Amis once described Old English as Ape’s Bum Fodder and what I am trying to do here is dismiss these. I’m not sure about the anatomy of an ape but I will certainly try and take that first point on. What follows on really I suppose based on this thing that when people view history, when they are writing about history or they are interpreting history, they are doing it through their present circumstances and if we consider going way back you remember I may have mentioned Tacitus who wrote ‘The Germania’ we could take him as a good example. What he is trying to describe http://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/engfac/oldenglish-audio/rss20.xml 1 Old English Then and Now and define from a Roman perspective the people who lived the other side of the Rhine, these Germanic barbarians. But he is doing it from a particular angle. Firstly he is trying to capture what they do, their cultural beliefs etc. but more importantly what he is trying to do is say “Here are a bunch of noble savages and what’s happening to the Roman Empire, it’s going down the pan and we should probably be learning from these, even these savages can do this.” Of course it’s all made up, he didn’t go there, he didn’t visit these places so it’s entirely fictitious but it has very much influenced what we know about today or what people perceive of the Anglo Saxons and Germanic tribes. If we move a bit later, St. Gildas a British monk, he writes a history of Britain around mid 6th century, around that and he is writing it from the perspective of the indigenous people who are facing invasions from these pagan Anglo Saxons. So again he is writing the story and in his particular story again he is saying “Look we’ve created all these sins, we’ve done all these things, our morals have slipped and that’s why we are having these pagan, nasty Anglo Saxons visit upon us.” But again he is rewriting history, interpreting history for his present circumstances and even the venerable Bede was doing just that. So when he writes in the early 8th century, his history of the English people, what he is talking about there is trying to unify, or present unified England to the people, unified under one religious belief. So again he is writing history from his perspective with his political motives. And that is pretty much what we are going to see as we go through. So let’s take a more modern day example of where we can see people applying what they think about modern day perceptions to the past. It goes on, I actually heard people quoting that so good on you. So a very good example of taking medieval society, how it’s structured and trying to apply modern day beliefs back to it in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as I am sure you know. And really what we are going to do now is take a journey through this medieval land and I think what you learn or what I learnt from looking at these, these later day depictions of people is that the place, whatever you want to define this, exists in the present, it doesn’t exist in the past. And that changing perceptions, the way the Anglo Saxons and Old English is viewed throughout the centuries following on from their departure or removal of their power is based on what the perceptions of the modern day cultural needs are and that’s what people apply. And anachronisms are accepted and even perpetuated. So what we are going to see is a series of rewrites of the Anglo Saxon history. That picture by the way if you don’t know is a theme park ride in Blackpool pleasure beach called Valhalla and you go, it’s like a roller coaster in the dark and you get very wet. So don’t do it in February as I did because it’s freezing. So the first rewrite actually happens quite soon after the Anglo Saxon period as we would define it. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this but it is the Bayeux Tapestry as you all know, this is the scene of Harold possibly getting one in the eye, very dubious to say the least is that Harold, that’s his name there. But the point about the Bayeux Tapestry is that it does depict the Norman Conquest of course and it was probably commissioned by the Normans but it was probably made and sewn or whatever, embroidered by the Anglo Saxons, so hidden throughout that there is an attempt to present two angles on this particular story. Very soon after the Norman Conquest we get these people but they are followed up by other writers, William Jumiere, William Lamans, Geoffrey of Monmouth who are presenting the story of the victors who are right and back and looking at this and looking particularly at Harold and what they thought of him and then perhaps saying “Well previous Anglo Saxon Kings were fine but Harold wasn’t” etc. etc. So you get this regurgitation, rewriting of the history from different angles. Now just before we move on from that everyone often says Harold II was the last Anglo Saxon King of England, this is not true, possibly Edgar Atherling did reign for a couple of months 2 http://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/engfac/oldenglish-audio/rss20.xml Stuart Lee between the Norman conquest in October, the Battle of Hastings October 14th and William’s coronation in December but nevertheless his niece Matilda comes back onto the throne, she is the wife of Henry I so their descendants are Anglo Saxons. And of course we have the House of Wettin, currently on the throne, you may not know they were called that, probably you’ve heard of Saxe Coburg and Gotha or House of Windsor as they changed their name during the first World War quite wisely. They are of course Saxons from Saxony so the Anglo Saxons are back. The second rewrite is another curious period in English history. You remember in the prose lecture I mentioned that Alfred has instigated this idea that text should be written in English because that is what the English understand. So he merrily initiated translations of many key texts and from that we get the translations of the Bible into Old English, so should I say was not heretical. So it is surprising of course that Whitcliff and Tindall are considered heretical but nevertheless that wasn’t the case in the 10th century and 11th century. While we are on the theme of religious beliefs etc. the Anglo Saxons and Anglo Saxon literature again picked up and this is possibly what restarts the subject as a discipline as a political football if you like between the Protestants and the Catholics.
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