RACE AND ETHNICITY IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE VOLUME 24 STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE edited by Francis G.Gentry Professor of German Pennsylvania State University A ROUTLEDGE SERIES OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES: WHERE TROUBADOURS WERE Illustrated Manuscripts BISHOPS Mary C.Olson The Occitania of Folc of Marseille (c. QUEENS IN THE CULT OF THE 1150–1231) FRENCH RENAISSANCE Nicole M.Schulman MONARCHY JOHN CASSIAN AND THE Public Law, Royal Ceremonial, and READING OF EGYPTIAN Political Discourse in the History of MONASTIC CULTURE Regency Government, 1484–1610 Steven D.Driver Elizabeth A.McCartney CHOOSING NOT TO MARRY THE CONTESTED THEOLOGICAL Women and Autonomy in the Katherine AUTHORITY OF THOMAS Group AQUINAS Julie Hassel The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourçain FEMININE FIGURAE Elizabeth Lowe Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women BODY AND SACRED PLACE IN Writers MEDIEVAL EUROPE, 1100–1389 Rebecca L.R.Garber Dawn Marie Hayes BODIES OF PAIN WOMEN OF THE HUMILIATI Suffering in the Works of Hartmann A Lay Religious Order in Medieval von Aue Civic Life Scott E.Pincikowski Sally Mayall Brasher THE LITERAL SENSE AND THE CONSUMING PASSIONS GOSPEL OF JOHN IN LATE The Uses of Cannibalism in Late MEDIEVAL COMMENTARY AND Medieval and Early Modern Europe LITERATURE Merrall Llewelyn Price Mark Hazard LITERARY HYBRIDS THE REPRODUCTIVE Cross-dressing, Shapeshifting, and UNCONSCIOUS IN LATE Indeterminacy in Medieval and MEDIEVAL AND EARLY Modern French Narrative MODERN ENGLAND Erika E.Hess Jennifer Wynne Hellwarth THE KING’S TWO MAPS MYSTICAL LANGUAGE OF Cartography and Culture in SENSE IN THE LATER MIDDLE Thirteenth-Century England AGES Daniel Birkholz Gordon Rudy PESTILENCE IN MEDIEVAL AND FAIR AND VARIED FORMS EARLY MODERN LITERATURE Visual Textuality in Medieval Bryon Lee Grigsby RACE AND ETHNICITY IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE Stephen J.Harris ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK & LONDON Published in 2003 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harris, Stephen J., 1966– Race and ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon literature/by Stephen J.Harris. p. cm.— (Studies in medieval history and culture; v. 24) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-96872-0 (Hardcover: alk. paper) 1. English language—Old English, ca. 450–1100—History and criticism. 2. Race in literature. 3. England—Ethnic relations—History—To 1500. 4. England—Race relations —History—To 1500. 5. Ethnic relations in literature. 6. Germanic peoples in literature. 7. Race relations in literature. 8. Ethnic groups in literature. 9. Ethnicity in literature. 10. Kinship in literature. I. Title. II. Series. Pri79 .R32H37 2003 829'.09355–dc21 2003010599 ISBN 0-203-49799-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-58001-X (Adobe eReader Format) Series Editor Foreword Far from providing just a musty whiff of yesteryear, research in Medieval Studies enters the new century as fresh and vigorous as never before. Scholars representing all disciplines and generations are consistently producing works of research of the highest caliber, utilizing new approaches and methodologies. Volumes in the Medieval History and Culture series will include studies on individual works and authors of Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personalities and events, theological and philosophical issues, and new critical approaches to medieval literature and culture. Momentous changes have occurred in Medieval Studies in the past thirty years in teaching as well as in scholarship. Thus the goal of the Medieval History and Culture series is to enhance research in the field by providing an outlet for monographs by scholars in the early stages of their careers on all topics related to the broad scope of Medieval Studies, while at the same time pointing to and highlighting new directions that will shape and define scholarly discourse in the future. Francis G.Gentry ad patres meos T.Frank Harris and Allen J.Frantzen The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment. Such a sentiment is fostered by all those agencies of the mind and spirit which may serve to gather up the traditions of a people, transmit them from generation to generation, and thereby create the continuity of a treasured common life which constitutes a civilization. —Justice Felix Frankfurter, Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 US. 586 (1940) O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. —Isaiah 10:5–6 Contents Acknowledgments x Abbreviations and Short Titles xi Chapter One: Voices of Race 1 Chapter Two: The Election of the Angles 45 Chapter Three: King Alfred’s Christendom 83 Chapter Four: Wulf among the Pagans 107 Chapter Five: Woden and Troy 131 Chapter Six: Ethnogenesis and The Battle of Maldon 157 Notes 187 Select Bibliography 257 Index 291