1st Edition

Space in the Medieval West Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies

By Fanny Madeline, Meredith Cohen Copyright 2014
    266 Pages
    by Routledge

    266 Pages
    by Routledge

    In the last two decades, research on spatial paradigms and practices has gained momentum across disciplines and vastly different periods, including the field of medieval studies. Responding to this ’spatial turn’ in the humanities, the essays collected here generate new ideas about how medieval space was defined, constructed, and practiced in Europe, particularly in France. Essays are grouped thematically and in three parts, from specific sites, through the broader shaping of territory by means of socially constructed networks, to the larger geographical realm. The resulting collection builds on existing scholarship but brings new insight, situating medieval constructions of space in relation to contemporary conceptions of the subject.

    Space in the Medieval West

    Biography

    Meredith Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is a founder of the International Medieval Society of Paris and served as President from 2003-2013. Her research focuses on medieval architecture and urbanism in the Gothic period, particularly in France. Fanny Madeline obtained her Ph.D. in medieval history from the Université de Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne in 2009 after completing a thesis on the building policy of the Angevin Kings of England. She is currently a member of the editorial board for the journal Medievales, and is the Paris Director for the International Medieval Society of Paris.

    'This project will be a great asset for libraries as a reference book. The individual essays will serve well for both further research projects and as documents to strengthen preexisting arguments since it is published by a well-known press, with chapters by both established and up-and-coming scholars, and supported by very reputable French and American institutions. If you are interested in the many facets of medieval constructions of space and modem understandings of them, make room on your plate for Space in the Middle West.' Hortulus ’...offer[s] stimulating perspectives on the potential of work on space to resonate beyond disciplinary boundaries. For scholars currently working on space, or indeed graduate students requiring a quick overview of the critical field, the introduction will be especially profitable and the footnotes even more so. Cohen and Madeline have produced a valuable and refreshing new collection that amply displays the range and depth of work currently undertaken on space, place, and imagined geographies in the humanities.’ Urban History 'Space in the Medieval West, a valuable anthology of essays on the broad theme of space as it was constructed, perceived, practiced, and mapped in the Middle Ages ...' Speculum 'For scholars currently working on space, or indeed graduate students requiring a quick overview of the critical field, the introduction will be especially profitable and the footnotes even more so. Cohen and Madeline have produced a valuable and refreshing new collection that amply displays the range and depth of work currently undertaken on space, place, and imagined geographies in the humanities.' Urban History ’...Space in the Medieval West serves to substantiate and complement existing studies whilst offering a number of fascinating new explorations into the iterative and contingent nature of space in the Middle Ages. For those close to the field of spatial studies, this essay collection will no doubt prove a thought-prov