Hasped and Hooped and Hirpling

Letters

Vol. 21 No. 24 · 9 December 1999

From Nicholas Perkins

In his review of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf translation (LRB, 11 November), Terry Eagleton draws attention to the name given at Oxford and at Cambridge to the language of the poem: ‘Anglo-Saxon, as Cambridge calls the stuff, or Old English, as Oxford prefers to label it (the choice of name is itself politically significant), has long been a cockpit of ideological contentions.’ The reverse would be nearer the truth. Cambridge has used the term ‘Old English’ for many years to describe the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Oxford has in fact been more keen on ‘Anglo-Saxon’ until recently, and while the official regulations now call the relevant courses ‘Old English’, this term’s Oxford lecture list resolutely sticks to ‘Anglo-Saxon’. The choice of name may indeed be politically significant, but if so, it’s a different and messier politics than Eagleton’s neat division allows.

Nicholas Perkins
St Hugh’s College, Oxford