The Elizabethan invention of Anglo-Saxon England : Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the study of Old English / Rebecca Brackmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brackmann, Rebecca.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Studies in Renaissance literature ; v. 30.

Studies in Renaissance literature, 1465-6310 ; v. 30

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lambarde, William, 1536-1601.

Nowell, Laurence, 1530-approximately 1570.

English language--Early modern, 1500-1700.

English language.

English language--Early modern.

Nowell, Laurence, 1530-approximately 1570--Criticism and interpretation.

Nowell, Laurence.

Lambarde, William, 1536-1601--Criticism and interpretation.

Lambarde, William.

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Law and literature--England--History--16th century.

Law and literature.

Literature and society--England--History--16th century.

Literature and society.

History.

Criticism and interpretation.

England.

Physical Description:

x, 244 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK : D.S. Brewer, 2012.

Summary:

Laurence Nowell (1530-C.1570), author of the first dictionary of Old English, and William Lambarde (1536-1601), Nowell's protégé and eventually the first editor of the Old English Laws, are key figures in Elizabethan historical discourses and in its political and literary society. Through their work, the period between the Germanic migrations and the Norman Conquest came to be regarded as a foundational time for Elizabethan England, overlapping with and contributing to contemporary debates on the shape of Elizabethan English language. Their studies took different strategies in demonstrating the role of early medieval history in Elizabethan national - even imperial - identity, while in Lambarde's legal writings Old English law codes become identical with the 'ancient laws' that underpinned contemporary common law. Their efforts contradict the assumption that Anglo-Saxon studies did not effectively participate in Tudor nationalism outside of Protestant polemic; instead, it was a vital part of making history 'English'. Their work furthers our understanding of both the history of medieval studies and the importance of early Anglo-Saxon studies to Tudor nationalism. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The Anglo-Saxonists and Their Books: Print, Manuscript, and the Circulation of Scholarship 1

Part I Anglo-Saxon Texts and Sixteenth-Century English

Chapter 2 The Abcedarium Glossary: Sources and Methods of Nowell's Old English Lexicography 29

Chapter 3 Inkhorns, Orthographers, and Antiquaries: Standardized English and the Dawn of Anglo-Saxon Studies 55

Part II Chorographies and the Past of England

Chapter 4 Somewhere in Time: The Abcedarium Place-Name Index 87

Chapter 5 Putting the Past in Place: Lambarde's Alphabetical Description and Perambulation of Kent 120

Chapter 6 Images and Imaginings of England 148

Part III Old English and the Common Law

Chapter 7 'The Saxons, our Ancestors': Ancient Law and Old English Laws 189.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-238) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781843843184

1843843188

OCLC:

758391370