ABSTRACT
One of the allegations made against philology and medieval studies was that they are irrelevant to the study of modern literature; another, that Anglo-Saxon literature is, through distance, culturally irrelevant; a third, that it maintains a study which is impertinently 'scientific'. Philology deals in 'facts' (so does editing, a necessary preoccupation of medievalists) , possesses analytic 'techniques', employs 'jargon'. The study of literature entails consideration of 'values', and values are felt to be the antithesis of facts and thus unamenable to scientific study.
