| Brooks Britton Elliott | Last modified date：2024.04.09 |
Associate Professor /
Faculty of Languages and Cultures: Department of Multicultural Society /
Department of Multicultural Society /
Faculty of Languages and Cultures
Books
| 1. | Britton Elliott Brooks
Karen Louise Jolly
Debby Banham
Jane Hawkes
Carol Neuman de Vegvar
Jonathan Wilcox
Caitlin Green
John Hines
John Niles
Kazutomo Karasawa
Michael W. Scott, Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England, Boydell and Brewer, UK, 2022.01, [URL], Global Perspectives opens a conversation about early medieval England seen through the lens of comparative and interconnected histories. This conversation interrogates the temporal and geographic field of study commonly called ‘Anglo-Saxon England’, particularly in relation to and from the point of view of other cultural identities, both those nearby and those at a distance, from as far away as the contemporary Pacific. The chapters are interdisciplinary, examining artistic, archaeological, literary, and historical artifacts, converging around the idea that early medieval England does not only define itself, but is often defined by others, specifically here by modern scholarship. The first section examines the transmission of material culture across borders, while querying the possibilities and limits of comparative and transnational approaches, including: the spread of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum var. aestivum), the collapsing of the art-historical ‘decorative’ and ‘functional’, and the unknowns about daily life in an early medieval English hall. The second section reimagines the permeable boundaries of early medieval England, 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 a examination of the Old English Orosius with relation to the Baltic. The third section addresses the construction of and responses to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ narratives, past and present, including: situation early Medieval England within an Eurasian Perspective; the historical origins of racialized Anglo-saxonism(s); and a comparison between the Hiberno-Saxon Missions and the Anglican Melanesian Mission. Global Perspectives offers no summary conclusion but rather invites readers to enter into new ways of thinking outside traditional boundaries. . |
| 2. | Britton Elliott Brooks , Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac, Boydell and Brewer, UK, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787445604, 2019.09, [URL], Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac explores the relationship between the natural world (Creation) and humanity through the early English saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their Anglo-Latin and Old English Lives. It argues that this relationship is best understood through received theological exegesis concerning Creation’s present state in the fallen world. The exegesis has its foundation in St Augustine’s interpretations of the Genesis narrative, though it enters the textual tradition of the Lives via an adapted portion from Augustine in Bede’s verse Life of Saint Cuthbert. Both Augustine and Bede argue, with slight differences, the following: that fallen Creation often functions to urge humanity, the saints included, towards greater holiness; that the Fall produced a relational breach between humanity and Creation (whether actual or ontological); and that the effects of the Fall can be temporarily removed by restoring a portion of Creation into its pre-fallen state by means of sanctity. The end result is a re-centering of the role of the physical world in early medieval literature, which lays the groundwork for a more nuanced engagement with pre-modern notions of the non-human world.. |
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