Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Perceptions of the Environment and Ecology

Edited by Thomas Willard

Book cover: Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Extent: 232 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies, Religious Studies

Series: Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Series volume number: 46

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(September 2020)

ISBN: 9782503590448

Price: $100.00

In stock

The environment–together with ecology and other aspects of the way people see their world–has become a major focus of pre-modern studies. The thirteen contributions in this volume discuss topics across the millennium in Europe from the late 600s to the early 1600s. They introduce applications to older texts, art works, and ideas made possible by relatively new fields of discourse such as animal studies, ecotheology, and Material Engagement Theory. From studies of medieval land charters and epics to the canticles sung in churches, the encyclopedic natural histories compiled for the learned, the hunting parks described and illustrated for the aristocracy, chronicles from the New World, classical paintings from the Old World, and the plays of Shakespeare, the authors engage with the human responses to nature in times when it touched their lives more intimately than it does for people today, even though this contact raised concerns that are still very much alive today.

  • Edited by Thomas Willard