Creating a gens Anglorum : social and ethnic identity in Anglo-Saxon England through the lens of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica
This thesis examines of the role of Bede in the creation of an English national identity by considering the use, re-use and transmission of the Historia Ecclesiastica across the Anglo-Saxon period. Bede's exemplary and providential history had created an image of an idealised past to inspire change in the present, and these models resonated with writers throughout this period. This study engages with the legacy of Bede's text by surveying a wide range of case studies from across Anglo-Saxon England with attention to a broad spectrum of generic, geographical and political contexts from the eighth to the early eleventh centuries, in Latin and vernacular English. Written in Latin as historical prose narrative in early eighth-century Northumbria, we see the work being used later in that century in a very similar context by Alcuin in his York Poem. In the ninth century the use of the text followed the shifting political hegemony of Anglo-Saxon England south through Mercia, where it was probably translated into English, and into Wessex where it was mined as a source for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In both of these texts, we see the Historia being used to respond to viking invasion in distinct ways, as the vernacular
McKinney, Windy A.
Creating a gens Anglorum : social and ethnic identity in Anglo-Saxon England through the lens of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. This thesis examines of the role of Bede in the creation of an English national identity by considering the use, re-use and transmission of the Historia Ecclesiastica across the Anglo-Saxon period. Bede's exemplary and providential history had created an image of an idealised past to inspire change in the present, and these models resonated with writers throughout this period. This study engages with the legacy of Bede's text by surveying a wide range of case studies from across Anglo-Saxon England with attention to a broad spectrum of generic, geographical and political contexts from the eighth to the early eleventh centuries, in Latin and vernacular English. Written in Latin as historical prose narrative in early eighth-century Northumbria, we see the work being used later in that century in a very similar context by Alcuin in his York Poem. In the ninth century the use of the text followed the shifting political hegemony of Anglo-Saxon England south through Mercia, where it was probably translated into English, and into Wessex where it was mined as a source for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In both of these texts, we see the Historia being used to respond to viking invasion in distinct ways, as the vernacular
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