Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature

Summary Across three thematically-linked sections, this volume charts the development of competing geographical, national, and imperial identities and communities in early medieval England. Literary works in Old English and Latin are considered alongside theological and historical texts from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Accounts of travel, foreign contacts, conversion, migration, landscape, nation, empire, and conquest are set within the continual flow of people and ideas from East to West, from continent to island and back, across the period. The fifteen contributors investigate how the early medieval English positioned themselves spatially and temporally in relation to their insular neighbours and other peoples and cultures. Several chapters explore the impact of Greek and Latin learning on Old English literature, while others extend the discussion beyond the parameters of Europe to consider connections with Asia and the Far East. Together these essays reflect ideas of inclusivity and exclusivity, connectivity and apartness, multiculturalism and insularity that shaped pre-Conquest England. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments, List of Figures, List of Abbreviations Introduction: Foreign Contacts, Landscapes, and Empire-Building ? MARK ATHERTON, KAZUTOMO KARASAWA, AND FRANCIS LENEGHAN Here, There, and Everywhere? Alfred and the East ? DANIEL ANLEZARK The Wanderings of Saturn: Psychogeography, Psalms, and Solomon and Saturn ? RACHEL BURNS Otherwheres in the Prose Texts of the Nowell Codex ? S. C. THOMSON Rome away from Rome: India, Rome, and England in lfric's 'Life of St Thomas' ? LUISA OSTACCHINI Christ Embracing the World: lfric's Description of the Crucifixion in 'De Passione Domini' ? KAZUTOMO KARASAWA A Place in the World Babel and Beyond: Thinking Through Migration in Genesis A ? DANIEL THOMAS The Sound-World of Early Medieval England: A Case Study of the Exeter Book Storm Riddle ? BRITTON BROOKS The Place of Stillness: Greek Patristic Thought in Cynewulf's Juliana ? ELENI PONIRAKIS St Rumwold in the Borderland ? HANNAH BAILEY The World of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth: A Landscape Biography ? MARK ATHERTON Nation and Empire Mapping Empire: Two World Maps in Early Medieval England ? HELEN APPLETON Good Neighbours? Representations of Britons, Welsh, Picts, and Scots in Pre-Conquest English Sources ? CAITLIN ELLIS From (North-)East to West: Geographical Identities and Political Communities in the Ninth- to Eleventh-Century Anglo-Scandinavian World ? RYAN LAVELLE Kings, People, and Lands: The Rhetoric of The Battle of Brunanburh?PAUL CAVILL End of Empire? Reading?The Death of Edward?in MS Cotton Tiberius B I ? FRANCIS LENEGHAN Index