Interrogations of materiality and geography, narrative framework and boundaries, and the ways these scholarly pursuits ripple out into the wider cultural sphere.
Early medieval England as seen through the lens of comparative and interconnected histories is the subject of this volume. Drawn from a range of disciplines, its chapters examine artistic, archaeological, literary, and historical artifacts, converging around the idea that the period may not only define itself, but is often defined from other perspectives, specifically here by modern scholarship.
The first part considers the transmission of material culture across borders, while querying the possibilities and limits of comparative and transnational approaches, taking in the spread of bread wheat, the collapse of the art-historical "decorative" and "functional", and the unknowns about daily life in an early medieval English hall. The volume then moves on to reimagine the permeable boundaries of early medieval England, with perspectives from the Baltic, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, including an examination of Vercelli Homily VII (from John Chrysostom's Greek Homily XXIX), Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā's Arabic descriptions of Barṭīniyah ("Britain"), and an consideration of the Old English
Orosius. The final chapters address the construction of and responses to "Anglo-Saxon" narratives, past and present: they look at early medieval England within a Eurasian perspective, the historical origins of racialized Anglo-Saxonism(s), and views from Oceania, comparing Hiberno-Saxon and Anglican Melanesian missions, as well as contemporary reactions to exhibitions of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Pacific Island cultures.
Contributors: Debby Banham, Britton Elliott Brooks, Caitlin Green, Jane Hawkes, John Hines, Karen Louise Jolly, Kazutomo Karasawa, Carol Neuman de Vegvar, John D. Niles, Michael W. Scott, Jonathan Wilcox
Banham, Debby: - DEBBY BANHAM is a tutor and special supervisor at Newnham College, Cambridge and an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.
Brooks, Britton Elliott: - Britton Elliott Brooks is assistant professor of English at Kyushu University. His research centres on the environmental humanities, focusing most recently on non-human soundscapes in early medieval literature and the role of the ocean in literature more broadly.
Hawkes, Jane: - JANE HAWKES is Professor Emerita of Medieval Art History at the University of York and a leading specialist on Anglo-Saxon sculpture and iconography and its broader context in relation to late antique, British and Irish early medieval art.
Hines, John: - JOHN HINES is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University.
Jolly, Karen Louise: - Karen Louise Jolly is professor of medieval European history at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa. Her research focuses on popular religion, marginal manuscripts, and re-imagining early medieval Britain through historical fiction.
Jolly, Karen Louise: - Karen Louise Jolly is professor of medieval European history at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa. Her research focuses on popular religion, marginal manuscripts, and re-imagining early medieval Britain through historical fiction.
Karasawa, Kazutomo: - Kazutomo Karasawa is Professor of English philology at Rikkyo University, Tokyo.
