1st Edition
Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages
This book is a comprehensive introduction to the landscapes of the Middle Ages within and beyond Europe, paying close attention to the relationship between ‘real’ and imagined landscapes and the ways that medieval people made and inhabited their world.
Rather than studying 'nature' in the Middle Ages, the book instead examines the spaces that people constructed through soil, stone, and song; water and wasteland; plants and animals; and timber, textiles, and texts, which in turn made up the medieval world. Likewise, the text emphasises a definition of environment that focuses on ‘living with’, inviting readers to think about the more-than-human worlds that medieval people depended on, cared for, constructed, and damaged. Bringing together a wide range of primary source material, including evidence from texts, material culture, and visual arts, the book reflects the diversity of landscapes and human responses to them throughout the course of this period and considers the role that these medieval worlds have played in shaping the modern, both physically and culturally.
Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages is an excellent resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in medieval studies and history, offering interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational insights into this period of immense change and innovation.
1. Introduction: What Do We Mean When We Talk about Medieval Landscapes and Environments?
2. Garden, Forest
3. Field, Farm, Fen
4. Desert, Wilderness, Waste
5. Sea
6. Rivers and Roads
7. Fortified Landscapes
8. Town and City
9. Heaven, Hell, and Other Worlds
10. Conclusion: Memories and Aftermath
Biography
Michael Bintley is Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London. He is author of Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England (2015) and Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture (2020).
Kate Franklin is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Birkbeck, University of London. She is Co-PI of the Vayots Dzor Silk Road Survey, a collaborative archaeological research project focused on the layered material worlds of Vayots Dzor, Armenia. Kate is author of Everyday Cosmopolitanisms: Living the Silk Road in Medieval Armenia (2021).
'This book provides us with a fascinating insight into medieval perceptions of landscape, enriched with a great diversity of literary and pictorial evidence. In hearing about the communities who occupied these places, and the people who travelled through them, we can see that landscape is not just a physical entity, but a mental construct –"realms real and imagined".'
Stephen Rippon, University of Exeter, UK
'This fascinating and wide-ranging volume takes the reader on a journey through the real and imagined landscapes of the Middle Ages – from the enchanted forests of northern Europe myth to the bustling port towns around the Mediterranean. It explores in detail the physicality of different environments in the period, using archaeology, material culture, art and both literary and historical texts to bring to life the huge range of landscapes which medieval people experienced in their daily lives.
The thematic chapters are filled with rich details about trade and pilgrimage, movement, power and the natural world – the details drawn from texts originating from across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This book gives us an insight into the power that different environments had to shape people’s lives across the globe during this period, and in turn, how people shaped those environments, both real and imaginary, to reflect their changing worldviews and experiences. A vital and immersive book for students and anyone interested in environmental change, the natural world and the medieval period.'
Sarah Spooner, University of East Anglia, UK
