Medieval Riverscapes

In this expansive history Ellen F. Arnold uses saints' lives and miracle stories, poetry, charters, chronicles, and historical narratives to examine how rivers were imagined and ascribed meaning c. 300–1100 CE. Focusing on storytelling across centuries, she explores how environmental experiences were incorporated into pre-modern cultural spaces.

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Fishermen, monks, saints, and dragons met in medieval riverscapes; their interactions reveal a rich and complex world. Using religious narrative sources to evaluate the environmental mentalities of medieval communities, Ellen F. Arnold explores the cultural meanings applied to rivers over a broad span of time, ca. 300-1100 CE. Hagiographical material, poetry, charters, chronicles, and historiographical works are explored to examine the medieval environmental imaginations about rivers, and how storytelling and memory are connected to lived experiences in riverscapes. She argues that rivers provided unique opportunities for medieval communities to understand and respond to ecological and socio-cultural transformations, and to connect their ideas about the shared religious past to hopes about the future.