The First English Speakers in Their Own Words

Decolonising medieval studies has revealed the extent to which our understanding of medieval literature is still mediated by the assumptions of the discipline’s foundational scholars in the 19th century. These assumptions have been disproportionately influential, both in popular contexts where they are used for a range of political purposes, and in academia because of the difficulties of transmission of medieval texts (scribal errors and manuscript damage) and the poor survival of archaeological material. Our assumptions about medieval attitudes are typically used to infer missing data or interpret corrupted texts. This project will offer a systematic assessment of attitudes expressed in early medieval English texts