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Article: Heathen Gods in Old English Literature.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. By RICHARD NORTH. (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 22) Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 1997. xvi + 374 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]; $69.95.
The exercise Richard North has set himself in this book is both an ancient and a daring one: ancient, in that from almost the beginnings of the recovery of Old English literature scholars were anxious to find in it some trace of the heathen past; daring, in that for many years now it has been taken for granted not only that hardly any such traces exist but that the very idea of looking for them is tainted by the romantic philology and Germanicizing ...