Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology: A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1793-1948

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, German-speaking scholars played a decisive role in founding and shaping the study of medieval and early modern English language and culture. During this process, aesthetic and literary enthusiasms were gradually replaced, first by broadly comparative and then by increasingly narrow scientistic practices, all confusingly subsumed under the term 'philology'. Towards 1871, German and Austrian Anglicists were successful at imposing-- for about 30 years …