Water is both a practical and symbolic element. Whether a drop blessed by saintly relics or a river flowing to the sea, water formed part of the natural landscapes, religious lives, cultural expressions, and physical needs of medieval women and men.

This volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to enlarge our understanding of the overlapping qualities of water in early England (c. 400 – c. 1100). Scholars from the fields of archaeology, history, literature, religion, and art history come together to approach water and its diverse cultural manifestations in the early Middle Ages. Individual essays include investigations of the agency of water and its inhabitants in Old English and Latin literature, divine and demonic waters, littoral landscapes of church archaeology and ritual, visual and aural properties of water, and human passage through water. As a whole, the volume addresses how water in the environment functioned on multiple levels, allowing us to examine the early medieval intersections between the earthly and heavenly, the physical and conceptual, and the material and textual within a single element.

Carolyn Twomey is a Visiting Assistant Professor of European History at St. Lawrence University in northern New York, USA. She researches and teaches the history of medieval religion and the material world. Daniel Anlezark is the McCaughey Professor of Early English Literature and Language at the University of Sydney. He teaches medieval literature and language, and researches on biblical poetry, and medieval science and literature.

Table des matières :

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Colour Plates

Introduction: Worlds of Water – Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark

The Sacred Nature of Rivers, Wells, Springs, and Other Wetlands in Anglo-Saxon England – Della Hooke

Rivers and Rituals: Baptism in the Early English Landscape – Carolyn Twomey

Swimming in Anglo-Saxon England – Simon Trafford

Sensing the Sea: Sounds of Sailors in Anglo-Saxon Literature – Rebecca Shores

The Sailors, the Sea Monster, and the Saviour: Depicting Jonah and the Ketos in Anglo-Saxon England – Elizabeth A. Alexander

Pearls before Paradise: Considering the Material Associations of Heavenly Water/s, Precious Stones, and Liminality in the Art of the Medieval West – Megan Boulton

‘Streams of Wholesome Learning’: The Waters of Genesis in Early Anglo-Saxon Exegesis – John J. Gallagher

Aquas ab Aquis: Aqueous Creation in Andreas – Michael Bintley

Water, Wisdom and Worldliness in the Anglo-Saxon Prose Lives of Guthlac – Helen Appleton

Drawing Alfredian Waters: The Old English Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II – Daniel Anlezark

Modor is monigra mærra wihta: Watering the World – Jill Frederick

Index

Informations pratiques :

Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England, éd. Carolyn Twomey, Daniel Anlezark, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021 (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 47). 289 p., 16 b/w ill. + 2 colour ill., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-58888-9. Prix : 80 euros.

Source : Brepols