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WINNER: AFCEMS Prize 2024
Highlights human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.
Forests, with their interlacing networks of trees and secret patterns of communication, are powerful entities for thinking-with. A majestic terrestrial community of arboreal others, their presence echoes, entangles, and resonates deeply with the human world. The essays collected here aim to highlight human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when, whether symbol and metaphor, or actual and real, their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.
The chapters interrogate the pre-Anthropocene environment, reflecting on trees as metaphors for kinship and knowledge as they appear in literary, historical, art-historical, and philosophical sources. They examine images of trees and trees in-themselves across a range of environmental, material, and intellectual contexts, and consider how humans used arboreal and rhizomatic forms to negotiate bodies of knowledge and processes of transition. Looking beyond medieval Europe, they include discussion of parallel developments in the Islamic world and that of the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
Highlights human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.
Forests, with their interlacing networks of trees and secret patterns of communication, are powerful entities for thinking-with. A majestic terrestrial community of arboreal others, their presence echoes, entangles, and resonates deeply with the human world. The essays collected here aim to highlight human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when, whether symbol and metaphor, or actual and real, their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.
The chapters interrogate the pre-Anthropocene environment, reflecting on trees as metaphors for kinship and knowledge as they appear in literary, historical, art-historical, and philosophical sources. They examine images of trees and trees in-themselves across a range of environmental, material, and intellectual contexts, and consider how humans used arboreal and rhizomatic forms to negotiate bodies of knowledge and processes of transition. Looking beyond medieval Europe, they include discussion of parallel developments in the Islamic world and that of the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 306
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Publication Date:
26 March 2024
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781843846642
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, NATURE / Ecology
This profoundly researched, well written, and clearly composed book has been deemed outstanding for its stimulating contribution to a nuanced and profound understanding of the nexus between nature and human creativity as expressed through various media in the visual arts and literature as well as theology and cosmology.
Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages is a milestone in medieval environmental history. A solid work of scholarship, with extensive notes and a full bibliography, it draws together a rich and varied literature on the subject, immersing readers in a world in which the intellectual and spiritual connection between humans and the green "life force" around them was much closer than it is today.
Overall, the publication impresses with its diversity of perspectives, which illuminate the arboreal as an aesthetic, material, and epistemological principle of the Middle Ages. Particularly strong are those contributions that productively explore the connection between materiality and idea, or that open up new approaches through intercultural comparisons and epistemic models.
Insgesamt besticht die Publikation durch ihre Vielfalt anPerspektiven, mit denen das Arboreal als ästhetisches, materiellesund erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip des Mittelalters beleuchtetwird. Besonders stark sind jene Beiträge, die die Verbindung vonMaterialität und Idee produktiv machen oder durch interkulturelleVergleiche und epistemische Modelle neue Zugänge eröffnen.
Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages is a milestone in medieval environmental history. A solid work of scholarship, with extensive notes and a full bibliography, it draws together a rich and varied literature on the subject, immersing readers in a world in which the intellectual and spiritual connection between humans and the green "life force" around them was much closer than it is today.
Overall, the publication impresses with its diversity of perspectives, which illuminate the arboreal as an aesthetic, material, and epistemological principle of the Middle Ages. Particularly strong are those contributions that productively explore the connection between materiality and idea, or that open up new approaches through intercultural comparisons and epistemic models.
Insgesamt besticht die Publikation durch ihre Vielfalt anPerspektiven, mit denen das Arboreal als ästhetisches, materiellesund erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip des Mittelalters beleuchtetwird. Besonders stark sind jene Beiträge, die die Verbindung vonMaterialität und Idee produktiv machen oder durch interkulturelleVergleiche und epistemische Modelle neue Zugänge eröffnen.
Introduction: The Surrounding Forest - Michael D. J. Bintley and Pippa Salonius
1. Mother Earth, Sister Moon and the Great Forest of Tāne - Pippa Salonius
2. Beowulf's Foliate Margins: The Surrounding Forest in Early Medieval England - Michael D. J. Bintley
3. Bone, Stone, Wood: Encountering Material Ecologies in Early Medieval Sculpture - Meg Boulton
4. 'Mervoillous fu li engineres que croix fist de fust, non de pierre': Materiality and Vernacular Theology in the Wood of the Cross Legend - Laura Chuhan Campbell
5. The Evolution of Relational Tree-Diagrams from the Twelfth to Fourteenth Century: Visual Devices and Models of Knowledge - José Higuera Rubio
6. From Forest to Orchard: Arboreal Areas as Mnemotechnic Supports in the Middle Ages - Naïs Virenque
7. The Vegetal Imaginary in Exemplary Literature: The Case of the Ci nous dit - Pauline Leplongeon
8. Adam's Sister: Tree Symbolism in Premodern Mystical Islamic Cosmology - Samer Akkach
Concluding Reflections
1. Mother Earth, Sister Moon and the Great Forest of Tāne - Pippa Salonius
2. Beowulf's Foliate Margins: The Surrounding Forest in Early Medieval England - Michael D. J. Bintley
3. Bone, Stone, Wood: Encountering Material Ecologies in Early Medieval Sculpture - Meg Boulton
4. 'Mervoillous fu li engineres que croix fist de fust, non de pierre': Materiality and Vernacular Theology in the Wood of the Cross Legend - Laura Chuhan Campbell
5. The Evolution of Relational Tree-Diagrams from the Twelfth to Fourteenth Century: Visual Devices and Models of Knowledge - José Higuera Rubio
6. From Forest to Orchard: Arboreal Areas as Mnemotechnic Supports in the Middle Ages - Naïs Virenque
7. The Vegetal Imaginary in Exemplary Literature: The Case of the Ci nous dit - Pauline Leplongeon
8. Adam's Sister: Tree Symbolism in Premodern Mystical Islamic Cosmology - Samer Akkach
Concluding Reflections