The Elements in the Medieval World

Marilina Cesario is Professor of Early Medieval Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. She has published in the fields of early medieval weather and astronomy, prognostication, reception of classical mythology in the early Middle Ages and on manuscript studies. She is the editor with H. Magennis of Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages (2018). Hugh Magennis is Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University Belfast. He has published widely on Old English and related literature, specialising particularly in saints’ lives, translation and poetic tradition. Among his publications are The Cambridge Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature, Translating Beowulf (both 2011) and, most recently, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library edition and translation Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints (2020) (with J. Kramer and R. Norris). Hugh Magennis is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the English Association. Elisa Ramazzina received her doctorate in Germanic Philology from the University of Pavia. Her research focuses on medieval landscape and the natural world, particularly water, and she has published in the fields of early medieval English poetry, meteorology, monster studies, medieval medicine and ecocriticism.

Foreword

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors



­Introduction

­ Marilina ­Cesario, ­Hugh ­Magennis and ­Elisa ­Ramazzina



­Part 1: Foundations of the ­Earth



1 ­Isidore of ­Seville and the ­Bounty of the ­Earth

­ Andrew ­Fear

2 The ­Transmutation of the ­­Elemental ­Idea: the ­Metaphorical, ­Mathematical and ­Material ­Alchemy of ­Robert ­Grosseteste

­ Tom C.B. ­McLeish, ­Sophie E.D. ­Abrahams, ­Sigbjørn O. ­Sønnesyn and ­Hannah E. ­Smithson

3 Shaking the ­Foundations: ­Reading ­Earthquakes in ­Byzantine and ­Chinese ­Sources

­ Marilina ­Cesario



­Part 2: Reception of the ­Earth



4 The ­Oikoumenē and the ­Carolingian ­Reception of ­Virgil

­ Sinéad O’­Sullivan

5 Ciò forma di la Terra il gran tumore: Cecco d’Ascoli and the Disposition of Dry Land in Medieval Cosmological Literature

 Virginia Iommi Echeverría

6 Terra, the ­Arts, and ­Spiritual ­Ecologies

­ Danielle B. ­Joyner

7 ­De terra et partibus: ­Visions of the ­Earth in ­Medieval ­Mapping, c. 800–1300

­ Margaret ­Tedford



­Part 3: Materiality of the ­Earth



8 ­Thinking with ­Mud: ­Dirt, ­Imagination and ­Early ­Medieval ­English ­Culture

­ Catherine A.M. ­Clarke

9 Mudbricks and Egyptian Monks: Some Critical Musings on Earthen Entanglements

 Stephen J. Davis

10 Maintaining the ­Earth: ­Soil ­Management and ­Sustainability in ­Medieval ­Agricultural ­Manuals

­ James ­Davis

11 ­Life in ­Earth: ­Animal ­Relations with ­Earth in the ­Physiologus, ­Bestiaries and ­Early ­Medieval ­Riddles

­ Alexandra ­Paddock