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VII.—The Philological Legend of Cynewulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

Romance seldom stalks frank and undisguised. It wears the sober cloak of religion in the pious fictions of the saints and assumes the honest name of history in the inventions of chroniclers. Yet nowhere does it veil its face more darkly than in the pages of seemingly serious-minded biographers. That curious volume, recorded by Isaac D'Israeli, the Farfalloni degli Antichi Historici, might easily find its counterpart in our English literary apocrypha. The legalized narrative of Alfred's splendid foundation of the University of Oxford; Chaucer's life at the University and at Woodstock and his base betrayal of his friends; Shakespeare's intrigue with William Herbert's mistress; Milton's dream-meeting with the fair Italians under the Cambridge tree—all these have been themes of the legend maker. Now he who harks back to the earliest days of Old English prose and poetry will find disguised romance lurking everywhere. The philologist has often dragged it forth and stripped it of its pretences; but he has just as often connived at its rogueries. This connivance has been in the main unconscious, for the Anglist has been the dupe of his methods which have led him all unwitting into the very lap of legends. In his fallacies of false assumption, in his tame acquiescence in unfounded assertions that bear a certain stamp of authority and in his proneness to manipulate by argument data that he will be branded for doubting, the modern scholar is too often akin to the medieval schoolman. And so, in his last chapter, sly romance has its way with him.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1911

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