Editing Old English literature (section)

=== 19th, 20th, and 21st century scholarship ===
In the 19th and early 20th centuries the focus was on the Germanic and pagan roots that scholars thought they could detect in Old English literature.{{sfn|Stanley|1975}} Because Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be written down, 19th-century scholars searching for the roots of European "national culture" (see [[Romantic Nationalism]]) took special interest in studying what was then commonly referred to as 'Anglo-Saxon literature',<ref>{{Citation|last=Davis|first=Kathleen|title=Old English lyrics: a poetics of experience|date=2012|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-early-medieval-english-literature/old-english-lyrics-a-poetics-of-experience/00629EE84B57C85E31E2DAB56B335043|work=The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature|pages=332–356|editor-last=Lees|editor-first=Clare A.|series=The New Cambridge History of English Literature|place=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-19058-9|access-date=2022-01-29}}</ref> and Old English became a regular part of university curriculum.<ref>{{Citation |title=Why Do We Study the Manuscript? |date=2020 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-medieval-british-manuscripts/why-do-we-study-the-manuscript/B2CF8CBAEF453FA9937B77179882D861 |work=The Cambridge Companion to Medieval British Manuscripts |pages=127–234 |editor-last=Treharne |editor-first=Elaine |series=Cambridge Companions to Literature |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-10246-0 |access-date=2022-10-13 |editor2-last=Da Rold |editor2-first=Orietta}}</ref>

After World War II there was increasing interest in the manuscripts themselves, developing new palaeographic approaches from antiquarian approaches. [[Neil Ker]], a [[paleographer]], published the groundbreaking ''Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon'' in 1957, and by 1980 nearly all Anglo-Saxon manuscript texts were available as facsimiles or editions.{{Citation needed|date=January 2022}}

On account of the work of Bernard F. Huppé,{{sfn|Huppé|1959}} attention to the influence of [[Augustine|Augustinian]]{{clarify|date=January 2022}} [[exegesis]] increased in scholarship.{{sfn|Hill|2002}}

[[J.R.R. Tolkien]] is often credited with creating a movement to look at Old English as a subject of [[literary theory]] in his seminal lecture "[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]" (1936).{{sfn|Cameron|1982|p=287}}

Since the 1970s, along with a focus upon [[paleography]] and the physical manuscripts themselves more generally, scholars continue to debate such issues as dating, place of origin, authorship, connections between Old English literary culture and global medieval literatures, and the valences{{clarify|date=January 2022}} of Old English poetry that may be revealed by contemporary theory: for instance, feminist, queer, critical race, and eco-critical theories.{{Citation needed|date=January 2022}}