Gender and the 'Natural' Environment in the Middle Ages

A collection of essays that explore how humans understood their relationship with the environment in the Middle Ages.

Using written and visual evidence from c.1150–1500 CE—including medical, literary, and scientific works—the essays in this collection address the relationship between the human and the “natural” at a time when new worlds, new texts, and new religious experiences reshaped the individual and collective relationship with the cosmos. The later Middle Ages in Europe c.1150–c.1500 can be viewed as an extensive scientific laboratory, with scholars and other writers producing texts that sought to define and redefine the human body – in relation to its daily work and environment, and in relation to God. This volume draws on written and visual evidence from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, placing gender at the centre of its enquiries, addressing the relationship between the human and the ‘natural’ (including the non-human) at a time when new worlds, new texts and new religious experiences were reshaping the individual and collective relationship with the cosmos, and challenging as well as reinforcing established hierarchies.

• | Author: Patricia Skinner, Theresa L. Tyers
• | Publisher: University of Wales Press
• | Publication Date: Sep 15, 2023
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781837720576
• | ISBN-10: 1837720576