Beyond ecocriticism: a cosmocritical reading of Ælfwine's prayerbook

Whereas previous scholarship on the early eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon compilation known as Ælfwine’s Prayerbook has focused on particular kinds of material it contains, this article takes account of the full range of texts and images in the manuscript in order to understand it as a whole. To do so, the essay establishes a new theoretical framework based on a critique of ecocriticism. Bringing contemporary African environmental thinking into dialogue with Martin Heidegger’s account of human dwelling and his concept of the fourfold permits a broader and more historically appropriate conception of that which is other than human. An analysis of the contents of Ælfwine’s Prayerbook in terms of this framework is followed by a conclusion setting out the wider potential application of the approach developed in this essay

Geoffrey of Monmouth and J. R. R. Tolkien : myth-making and national identity in the twelfth and twentieth centuries

The twelfth-century account of the early history of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, his Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), introduced the stories of King Lear and Cymbeline to the world and provided the seminal early account of King Arthur. The parallels between Geoffrey’s work and that of J. R. R. Tolkien seem to me now to be even more striking than when I wrote that paragraph in Tolkien and Wales. This essay explores in greater depth and more detail than was possible in my book the ways in which Geoffrey and Tolkien turned to the making of myth in order to address contemporary concerns around the issue of national identity