Reading Nature in the Early Middle Ages: Writing, Language, and Creation in the Latin Physiologus, Ca. 700-1000

Dorofeeva, Anna

ISBN 10: 1802700021 / ISBN 13: 9781802700022

Published by Arc Humanities Press, 2023

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 399582334

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reading Nature in the Early Middle Ages: Writing, Language, and Creation in the Latin Physiologus, Ca. 700-1000
• Publisher: Arc Humanities Press
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1802700021
• ISBN 13: 9781802700022
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.