Like a ship navigating shifting tides, the word Anglo-Saxon has been carried across time and space by the currents of history, ideology, and cultural interpretation. This collection of essays explores the evolving significance of the term, revealing how it has been constructed, contested, and reimagined from the early medieval period to the present day. Bringing together perspectives from history, literature, archaeology, and political thought from a non-Anglophone perspective, the contributors examine how Anglo-Saxon has been used to shape national identities, scholarly traditions, and social narratives across Europe.

From medieval chronicles to modern political discourse, this volume uncovers the many lives of a term that continues to spark debate. Addressed to scholars, students, and anyone interested in the power of historical narratives, this work invites us to reconsider not just a label, but the broader questions of heritage, identity, and belonging that it represents.

Omar Khalaf is Associate Professor of Germanic Philology at the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, University of Padua. His main research areas are Old and Middle English philology and literature and he has published extensively on the Old English Orosius and on the textual tradition of Earl Rivers’ Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers (late 15th century). His first monograph Alexander and Dindimus. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, (Heidelberg, Winter, 2017) won the prize of the Italian Association of Germanic Philology.

This book offers a fresh look at the vexed issue of the term Anglo-Saxon in the context of the study of early Medieval England. In recent years, the use of this word has come to be perceived as problematic and has turned into a challenge for our scholarly practice and community. The present volume collects a set of multidisciplinary essays, which span the pre- and post-Conquest history of England, eventually reaching the present day, as Anglo-Saxon is a word with a lengthy history.

Its chapters assess the meaning of the term in early English history and its subsequent developments. They also focus on the sixteenth century, when the word in question was revived in England; a few essays are devoted to the peaks of Anglo-Saxonism in different countries and times. All the essays acknowledge and explore the consequences of the legacy of so many different usages, as Anglo-Saxon, beginning in the modern age, acquired distinct political and cultural connotations that have contributed to contemporary issues of racism and white supremacy. However, as the book perspicuously shows, the use of the term was never neutral from the very beginning. The essays assess the use and origin of the word itself and, in several cases, conclude with a balanced suggestion, far from calling for radical changes in our field of research. 

The trump card of this volume, which appears several years after the outbreak of the issue, a time span that contributes to due scholarly detachment, is that it has gathered a group of scholars, so to speak, not “emotionally involved” in the use and misuse of the term Anglo-Saxon. Each one elaborated on the subject in accordance with the underlying guidelines set by the editor, whose judicious contribution to the whole book is evident also in the valuable introduction.

Prof. Patrizia Lendinara – Emerita Professor of Germanic Philology, University of Palermo