The changing History of English Poetry 1774–1871: language, literature and Anglo-Saxon whiteness

ABSTRACT

Race formation, canon formation, and the writing of linguistic history can all be understood as processes of standardisation that differentiate through inclusion and exclusion of selected characteristics (of a human group, language use, or literary work) in synchronic moments and artificially link those moments to create diachronic histories that can span millennia. As we will show in this essay, Thomas Warton’s The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the commencement of the Eighteenth Century (1775–1778) enacts all three processes simultaneously in ways that are inextricably entangled, and structured by an ideology of standardisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Canon
• poetry
• language
• vernacular
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Subsequently abbreviated to The History.

2 Thomas Wharton, The History of English Poetry, 3 vols (London: J. Dodsley, 1774), I, p. ii.

3 William Carew Hazlitt, ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, in William Carew Hazlitt (ed.), The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London: Reeves and Turner, 1871), I, pp. v–xvi (ix).

4 Trevor Ross, Making of the English Literary Canon: From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1998), pp. 266–67. On Warton and the Gothic imagination see also Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 190–213.

5 For example, Jonathan Brody Kramnick, Making the English Canon: Print-Capitalism and the Cultural Past, 1700–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). David Matthews notes the re-editions without detailed exploration in The Making of Middle English, 1765–1910 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 31.

6 Toni Morrison, Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations (London: Vintage, 2019), p. 162. See also, for example, E. Dean Kolbas, Critical Theory and the Literary Canon, Critical Theory and the Literary Canon (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001); Philipp Löffler, ‘The Practice of Reading and the Need for Literary Value’, in Philipp Löffler (ed.), Reading the Canon: Literary History in the 21st Century (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), pp. 1–20.

7 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York, NY: Routledge, 1994), p. 55.

8 We draw on Geraldine Heng’s account of race in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 33. For cognate accounts of linguistic history and canon formation see, respectively, Tim Machan, ‘Chaucer and the History of English’, Speculum, 87.01 (2012), pp. 147–75; and Kramnick, Making the English Canon.

9 Jonathan Rosa, ‘Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies across Communicative Contexts’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 26.2 (2015), pp. 162–83; Jim Milroy, ‘Historical Description and the Ideology of the Standard Language’, in Laura Wright (ed.) The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 11–28.

10 Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa, ‘Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education’, Harvard Educational Review, 85.2 (2015): 149–71 (150).

11 Shyama Rajendran, ‘Undoing “The Vernacular”: Dismantling Structures of Raciolinguistic Supremacy’, Literature Compass, 16 (2019): 1–13.

12 Stephen J. Harris, Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 8.

13 Bill Ashcroft, ‘Language and Race’, Social Identities, 7.3 (2001): 311–28. On the construction of Old English as white and male through the literary canon, see Erik Wade, ‘Representation and Inclusion in the Old English Classroom.’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 27.2 (2020), pp. 19–40 (pp. 5–6).

14 Ross, Making of the English Literary Canon, p. 129.

15 We put quote marks around ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in this essay to draw attention to its specific construction as a racial term; all the editions of The History use it. On the racial implications of ‘Anglo-Saxon’, see Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik Wade, ‘The Many Myths of the Term “Anglo-Saxon“’, Smithsonianmag.com, 2021 <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/many-myths-term-anglo-saxon-180978169/> [Date accessed: 19 August 2021]; David Wilton, ‘What Do We Mean By Anglo-Saxon? ‘Pre-Conquest to the Present, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 119.4 (2020), pp. 425–54.

16 See Hugh A. MacDougall. Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (University Press of New England, 1982); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Harvard University Press, 1986); Reginald Horsman, ‘Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain Before 1850’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 37.3 (1976): 387; Louise D’Arcens and Chris Jones, ‘Excavating the Borders of Literary Anglo-Saxonims in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Australia’, Representations, 121.1 (2013): 85–106.

17 Catherine E. Karkov, Anna Kłosowska, and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures (punctum books, 2020); Adam Miyashiro, ‘Our Deeper Past: Race, Settler Colonialism, and Medieval Heritage Politics’, Literature Compass, 16.9–10 (2019): Critical Race and the Middle Ages: 1–11 at https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12550 [Date accessed: 15 December 2023]; Eduardo Ramos, ‘Philology and Racist Appropriations of the Medieval’, Literature Compass, 20.7–9 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12734 [Date accessed: 15 December 2023]; Mary Rambaran-Olm, Necessary Housework: Dismantling the Master's House (Public Books, 2021); Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik Wade,‘What’s in a Name? The Past and Present Racism in “Anglo-Saxon” Studies’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 52 (2022), pp. 135–53; Wilton, ‘What do we mean by Anglo-Saxon?’

18 See, for instance, Dustin M. Frazier Wood, Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York, NY: Boydell, 2020), p. 29.

19 Warton, The History, I, p. vi.

20 Robert Folkenfilk, ‘Folklore, Antiquarianism, Scholarship and High Literary Culture’, in John Richetti (ed.), The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 602–22.

21 Robert W. Rix, ‘Romancing Scandinavia: Relocating Chivalry and Romance in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, European Romantic Review, 20.1 (2009): 3–20 (p. 16).

22 Folkenflik, ‘Folklore,’ p. 610.

23 David Fairer, ‘Poetry’, in David Womersley (ed.), A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake (Oxford: Blackwell, 2017), pp. 560–74 (p. 561).

24 Folkenflik, ‘Folklore’, p. 618.

25 Ibid.

26 Richard Price, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in Richard Price (ed.), The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London: Thomas Tegg, 1824), I, pp. 11–123 (p. 46).

27 The poem is now generally known as The Battle of Brunanburh and was given in modern English prose translation by Warton. See Richard Price, ‘Note by the Editor on the Saxon Ode on the Victory of Athelstan’, in Price (ed.), The History, 1824, I, pp. lxxxvii-cii.

28 Price, ‘Note by the Editor’, The History, 1824, I, p. lxxxvii.

29 Richard Taylor, ‘Advertisement’, in Richard Taylor (ed.), The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London: Thomas Tegg, 1840), I, pp. iii–iv (p. iii).

30 Ibid.

31 Richard Taylor, ‘Note on the Northern Genealogies,’ in Richard Taylor (ed.), The History of English Poetry, 1840, I, pp. 95–96.

32 Hazlitt, ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, I, p. vi.

33 Ibid., p. xi.

34 On the history of race as a scientific concept, see Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York, NY: Norton, 2010).

35 Robert Wald Sussman, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 16.

36 He was careful to clearly separate the Saxons from later invaders from the East whom he said were also called Goths but were, in fact, different races. Warton, The History, I, Dissertation I, n.p. Warton’s volumes were not fully paginated. His front matter was paginated with Roman numerals, the three dissertations were unpaginated, and ‘The History of English Poetry’ was paginated with Arabic numerals. We follow this practice in our citations.

37 Warton, The History of English Poetry, I, Dissertation I, n.p.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 On Percy’s ideas about Gothic language, literature, and race see Helen Young, ‘Thomas Percy’s Racialization of the European Middle Ages’, Literature Compass, 16 (2019), pp. 1–11: https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12543 [Date accessed: 15 December 2023].

43 He had previously made this argument in Observations on the Faerie Queene (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1754).

44 On medievalism, orientalism, and histories of romance see John M. Ganim, Medievalism and Orientalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

45 Ganim, Medievalism and Orientalism, pp. 35–36.

46 Price, ‘Editor’s Preface’, I, p. 24.

47 Hazlitt, ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, I, p. 28.

48 Variation in ‘popular fictions … will hardly afford a stronger contrast in their lineaments, than the physical differences displayed in the conformation of the human frame’ from Greece to the Arctic. Price, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. 53.

49 Hazlitt (ed.), The History, 1871, I, Dissertation I, p. 91, n. 1. The layering of notes in the various editions at times obscures authorship. Where notes, or sections of notes, are signed we give the author in addition to the editor of the edition. Where authorship is not clear, the relevant editor is listed.

50 Ibid., p. 92.

51 Warton, The History, I, pp. 1–2. Hickes’s ideology of language, particularly his concerns about ‘mixed’ languages being barbarous, likely also influenced Warton. On Hickes’s ideology, see Christopher M. Cain, ‘George Hickes and the “invention” of the Old English Dialects’, Review of English Studies, 61.252 (2010), pp. 729–48 <https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgq029>.

52 Warton, The History, I. p. 1.

53 Ibid., I, p. 7.

54 Ibid.

55 Milroy, ‘Historical Description’, p. 17.

56 Warton, The History, pp. I, 2.

57 Ibid., p. 30.

58 Tim William Machan, ‘Chaucer and the History of English,’ Speculum, 87.1 (2012), pp. 147–75 (pp. 149–51); Milroy, ‘Historical Description’, pp. 18–20.

59 Warton, The History, I, p. 2.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., p. 6.

62 Ibid., p. 5. On modern use of ‘vernacular’ and ideologies of standardisation see Rajendran ‘Undoing “The Vernacular”’.

63 Ibid., pp. 85–86. Warton praised Latin poetry by English authors from the period in his ‘Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into England,’ but does not consider it English poetry.

64 Warton, The History of English Poetry, I, p. xiii. On the progressive removal of Anglo-Norman from English linguistic and poetic histories see Helen Young and Stephanie Downes, ‘Anglo-Norman in Exile: The Early Critical Reception of Piers Langtoft’s Chronicle’, The Medieval Journal, 4.2 (2014), pp. 103–22.

65 Warton, The History, I, p. 88.

66 Ibid., 87.

67 Price (ed.), The History, 1824, I, p. 2, n. 1.

68 Price, ‘Editor’s Preface’, pp. 108–9.

69 Ibid., p. 110.

70 Ibid., pp. 106–108.

71 Taylor (ed.), The History, 1840, I, p. 84, n. 176. The note is signed R.T.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid. Hazlitt expanded on this schema in his own very substantial and often undifferentiated revision of Warton’s text in the same volume, pp. 22–27.

75 Price, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. 112.

76 Ibid., p. 107.

77 Hazlitt (ed.), The History, 1871, II, 26.

78 Warton, The History, I, p, ii.

79 Ibid., Dissertation I, I, n.p. Italics original.

80 Ibid., p. 49.

81 Ibid., pp. 28–29.

82 Ibid., p. 30–31.

83 Ibid., p. 32.

84 Ibid., p. 7–8. His chief method of dating is the presence of ‘Norman terms’ (p. 7) which he glosses as ‘Gallo-French’ (p. 11).

85 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

86 Price, ‘Editor's Preface’, p. 112.

87 Richard Price, ‘On the Lais of Marie de France’, in Price (ed.), The History (1842), I, pp. lxxiv-lxxxvi (p. lxxxv).

88 Henry Sweet, ‘Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, in Hazlitt (ed.), The History (1871), II, pp. 3–33.

89 Ibid., p. 3.

90 Ibid., p. 5.

91 Ibid., pp. 3–5.

92 Ibid., p. 5.

93 Ross, Making of the English Literary Canon, pp. 266–67.

94 Sweet, p. 5

95 Ibid., p. 6.

96 Warton, The History, I. p. vi.

97 Matthews, The Making of Middle English, p. 31.

98 David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), p. 176.

99 Some example include Donna Beth Ellard, Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, postSaxon Futures (punctum books, 2019); Dorothy Kim, ‘The Question of Race in Beowulf’, JSTOR Daily https://daily.jstor.org/the-question-of-race-in-beowulf/ ; Miyashiro, ‘“Our deeper past”;; Rambaran-Olm and Wade, ‘What’s in a Name?’; Wade, ‘Representation’.

100 William Carew Hazlitt, ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, in William Carew Hazlitt (ed.), The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London: Reeves and Turner, 1871), I, pp. v–xvi (p. ix).

101 Mary Rambaran-Olm, M Breann Leake, and Micah James Goodrich, ‘Medieval Studies: The Stakes of the Field’, Postmedieval, 11.4 (2020), pp. 356–70 (p. 359) <https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-020-00205-5> [Date accessed: 15 December 2023].

102 Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall and Mary Jo Salter, ‘Preface’, in Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall and Mary Jo Salter (eds), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 6th edition (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Son, 2018), pp. lxi–ixv (p. lxi).

103 Ibid.

104 Adam Miyashiro, ‘Reading the Runes: “Anglo-Saxon Studies,” Race and Colonialism’, in Catherine Karkov, Anna Kloskowska and Vincent W. J. van Gervan Oei (ed.), Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures (punctum books, 2020), pp. 321–25 (p. 324).

105 Rambaran-Olm, Leake, and Goodrich, ‘Medieval Studies’.