This book considers how to conceive of the group of islands known in our time as the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages. Was the archipelago considered one geographical unit? Was it an it, or were the islands a they? Singular or plural? Contributions consider possible paths to thinking about late-medieval archipelagism, and in doing so, highlight the inconsistencies and contradictions in medieval (and modern) conceptions of the region.
1. Our Seas of Islands.-
2. The trouble with Britain.- 3.Britain and the
sea of darkness: Islandology in al-Idrss Nuzhat al-Mushtaq.-
4. From Pliny
to Brexit: Spatial representation of the British Isles.-
5. Brendan meets
Columbus: A more commodious islescape.-
6. Fictions of the Island: girdling
the sea.-
7. The Bermuda assemblage: Toward a posthuman globalization.-
8.
Afterword.-
9. Dynamic fluidity and wet ontology: Current work on the
archipelagic North Sea.
Matthew Bold Goldie is Professor at Rider University, USA.
Sebastian Sobecki is Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada.
