Moving People, Moving Forms: Narrating Migration in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

This chapter considers how the Anglo-Saxon chronicles (ninth to twelfth century) depict three waves of migration: the coming of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, the Viking invasions, and the Norman Conquest. By focusing on the form and language of the texts, the chapter shows that the chronicles were not only preoccupied by migration as one of its central themes but were themselves deeply shaped by the literary cultures brought to England by immigrants, whether they came as conquerors or as learned clerical advisors. The result is a set of texts whose account of the origins of the English reveals the wide European horizons of their literary culture.