Renaissance and Reformation · 2009 · 68 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesAnthropologyHistoryAnthropology Of MigrationBritish LiteratureMythologyMigration NarrativesMythic ArchetypesMythic GenealogyMythic Narrative PatternsMythic NarrativesMythic TimeAnglo-saxon EnglandMythic HistoryMyths Of Migration
A revisionist interpretation of Anglo-Saxon England. Nicholas Howe proposes that the Anglo-Saxons fashioned a myth out of the 5th-century migration of their Germanic ancestors to Britain. Through the retelling of this story, the Anglo-Saxons ordered their complex history and identified their destiny as a people. Howe traces the migration myth throughout the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, in poems, sermons, letters and histories from the sixth to the eleventh centuries.