Engaging With Nature

Description

Historians and cultural critics face special challenges when treating the nonhuman natural world in the medieval and early modern periods. Their most daunting problem is that in both the visual and written records of the time, nature seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. In the broadest sense, nature was everywhere, for it was vital to human survival. Agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and the patterns of human settlement all have their basis in natural settings. Humans also marked personal, community, and seasonal events by natural occurrences and built their cultural explanations around the workings of nature, which formed the unspoken backdrop for every historical event and document of the time.

Yet in spite of the ubiquity of nature’s continual presence in the physical surroundings and the artistic and literary cultures of these periods, overt discussion of nature is often hard to find. Until the sixteenth century, responses to nature were quite often recorded only in the course of investigating other subjects. In a very real sense, nature went without saying.

As a result, modern scholars analyzing the concept of nature in the history of medieval and early modern Europe must often work in deeply interdisciplinary ways. This challenge is deftly handled by the contributors to Engaging with Nature, whose essays provide insights into such topics as concepts of animal/human relationships; environmental and ecological history; medieval hunting; early modern collections of natural objects; the relationship of religion and nature; the rise of science; and the artistic representations of exotic plants and animals produced by Europeans encountering the New World.

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Biologie
• Natural History
• Medieval
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Edad Media
• Middle Ages
• Great Britain
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268081638
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Engaging Nature with

Engaging with Nature

Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser editors

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright ©2008by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Librar y of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Engaging with nature : essays on the natural world in medieval and early modern Europe / editors, Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-268-03083-4(pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-268-03083-9(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy of nature--Europe--History. I. Hanawalt, Barbara. II. Kiser, Lisa J., 1949– BD581. E54 2008 304.209— dc22 2008009049

∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Librar y Resources.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser

chapter one Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura: Ecological Perspectives on the European Middle Ages Richard C. Hoffmann

chapter two Inventing with Animals in the Middle Ages Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

chapter three Ritual Aspects of the Huntà Force Susan Crane

chapter four The (Re)Balance of Nature, ca.1250 –1350 Joel Kaye

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Contents

chapter five Collecting Nature and Art: Artisans and Knowledge in theKunstkammer Pamela H. Smith

chapter six “Procreate Like Trees”: Generation and Society in Thomas Browne’sReligio Medici Marjorie Swann

chapter seven Human Nature: Observing Dutch Brazil Julie Berger Hochstrasser

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

115

137

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Acknowledgments

W e express our gratitude to Ohio State University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and to its College of Humani - ties for supporting the series of lectures and colloquia in2004 – 2005 that ultimately resulted in this volume. In connection with that series, we thank Pat Swinehart for helping to make it run smoothly. We are also grateful to Barbara Hanrahan of the University of Notre Dame Press and to the two thoughtful readers she assigned to review the vol- ume in its earlier drafts. Thanks, too, to James L. Battersby for his tire- less improvement of our volume’s ideas and the prose that expresses them. Finally, our gratitude also extends to Ryan Judkins for help with the index and the editorial assistants at the University of Notre Dame Press, especially Rebecca DeBoer, for their editorial wisdom and good cheer at various stages of the production process.

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Introduction

Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser

T he seven essays in this collection address the subject of the natural world in a number of medieval and early modern contexts, each giving special attention to human interactions with the natural envi- ronments that surrounded and supported both life and culture. These essays, representing several disciplines, and sometimes combining tradi- tional disciplines, are designed to make readers aware of current schol- arship investigating nature in the premodern and early modern past. Special problems beset historians and cultural critics treating the nonhuman natural world in these periods. The most daunting prob- lem is that in both the visual and written records of the time, nature ap- pears to be both everywhere and nowhere. In the broadest sense, of course, nature is everywhere. It supplies the most important contexts for human survival, since agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and the patterns of human settlement and migration all have their basis in natural settings. Moreover, humans marked personal, community, daily, and seasonal events by natural occurrences and built their cul- tural explanations around the workings of nature, which formed the unspoken backdrop for every historical event and document of the time. Nature was everywhere, too, in the texts and artifacts in which medieval and early modern people recorded and represented their

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