of an almost pathological sense of “cosmic kingship” indicates one of the strengths of Anderson’s book: his willingness to engage in complicated historical inquiry. While he sticks closely to his theme, he is always aware of the dangers of essentializing or creating too smooth a narrative. As he puts it, his book “focuses as much on differences as on similarities, as much on antagonism as on common ground” (8) in a worthy attempt to complicate the picture of the early Middle Ages. In his conclusion, Anderson notes the intellectual failure of previous art historical attempts to distinguish Byzantine, Western, and Islamic visual cultures of the early Middle Ages, attempts that “often fall back on ethnic, racial, or religious essentialisms that no longer convince” (148). Anderson, I think rightly, sees Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art as an effort to produce one possible basis for a new narrative of early medieval art, but he recognizes that “to banish” previous narratives will take many studies along the lines of his, not just one.

中文翻译：

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苏珊·威尔第·韦伯斯特（Susan Verdi Webster）的书信上的艺术家和帝国的语言：早期殖民地基多的画家和职业

对“王权”几乎是一种病态的理解表明了安德森这本书的优点之一：他愿意进行复杂的历史探究。当他坚持自己的主题时，他总是意识到使故事叙事过于本质化或产生过于流畅的危险。正如他所说的那样，他的书“着重于差异和相似性，既着眼于对抗，又着眼于共同点”（8），这是值得尝试的，以使中世纪早期的情况复杂化。在他的结论中，安德森（Anderson）指出，以前的艺术历史尝试将中世纪早期的拜占庭，西方和伊斯兰视觉文化区分开来的尝试在智力上是失败的，这些尝试“常常落在不再令人信服的种族，种族或宗教本质主义上”（ 148）。安德森，我认为是对的，