Nicholas Howe (February 17, 1953 – September 27, 2006) was an American scholar of Old English literature and culture, whose Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (1989) was an important contribution to the study of Old English literature and historiography.
Howe's Migration and Mythmaking, first published in 1989 and reprinted in 2001, was a study of Anglo-Saxon culture and literature. Howe argued that the Anglo-Saxons, descendants of peoples who had traveled from continental Europe to settle Britain and then returned to Europe to convert their pagan forebears (Howe discusses Wilfrid, Saint Willibrord, and Saint Boniface, in connection with such poems as Beowulf and Exodus), were very conscious of their return to Europe and saw themselves as an integral part of and parallel to "the Israelite and Hebrew migration in biblical history". The book "influenced a generation of scholars".[3]
In addition to his scholarship of Old English (and he was fond of discussing and publishing on parallels between Old English and modern culture and literature), Howe had an interest in geography and in American landscape and culture (including "theme parks, fast-food America, and construction cranes"), and published a number of (academic) articles in that field. His Across an Inland Sea: Writing in Place from Buffalo to Berlin is a memoir of recollections and travel writing.[1]
Selected works
The Old English Catalogue Poems: A Study in Poetic Form (1985)
Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (1989)
Across an Inland Sea: Writing in Place from Buffalo to Berlin (2003)
Home and Homelessness in the Medieval and Renaissance World (U of Notre Dame P, 2004)
Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Cultural Geography (Yale UP, 2007)
Howe, Nicholas (2012). "Who's Afraid of Translating Beowulf?". In Schulman, Jana K. & Szarmach, Paul E. (eds.). Beowulf at Kalamazoo: Essays on Translation and Performance. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University. pp. 31–49. ISBN978-1-58044-152-0.
^Schulman, Jana K.; Szarmach, Paul (2012). "Introduction". In Schulman, Jana K.; Szarmach, Paul (eds.). Beowulf at Kalamazoo: Essays on Translation and Performance. Studies in Medieval Culture. Vol. 50. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. pp. 1–11. ISBN9781580441520.