Reading Nature in the Early Middle Ages

Writing, Language, and Creation in the Latin Physiologus, ca. 700–1000
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80270-002-2
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Premodern Ecosystems--Climate, Environment, People

This book is a new cultural and intellectual history of the natural world in the early medieval Latin West. It examines the complex relationships between language, texts, and the physical world they describe, focusing on the manuscripts of the Physiologus—the foundation of the medieval bestiary. The Physiologus helped to shape the post-Roman worldview about the role and place of human beings in Creation. This process drew on classical ideas, but in its emphasis on allegory, etymology, and a plurality of readings, it was original and distinctive. This study demonstrates precisely how the early medieval re-contextualization of existing knowledge, together with a substantial amount of new writing, set the course of ideas about faith and nature for centuries to come. In doing so, it establishes the importance of multi-text miscellanies for early medieval written culture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dorofeeva, Anna

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction. The Physiologus Between East and West

Chapter 1. The Natural World in the Early Middle Ages

Chapter 2. The Early Latin Physiologus

Chapter 3. Miscellanies and Communities

Chapter 4. Nature and Salvation

Chapter 5. Nature and Learning in the Tenth Century

Conclusion

Appendix I. Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts

Appendix II. Physiologus Families

Bibliography

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dorofeeva, Anna
Anna Dorofeeva is Lecturer in Digital Palaeography at the University of Göttingen and was the recipient of the 2021 ANZAMEMS-Arc Humanities Award for Original Research.