Excavating the borders of literary Anglo-Saxonism in nineteenth-century Britain and Australia

Abstract

Comparing nineteenth-century British and Australian Anglo-Saxonist literature enables a "decentered" exploration of Anglo-Saxonism's intersections with national, imperial, and colonial discourses, challenging assumption that this discourse was an uncritical vehicle of English nationalism and British manifest destiny. Far from reflecting a stable imperial center, evocations of 'ancient Englishness' in British literature were polyvalent and self-contesting, while in Australian literature they offered a response to colonization and emerging knowledge about the vast age of Indigenous Australian cultures.