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.

Ellen F. Arnold is Associate Professor of Pre-modern Environmental History at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is the author of Negotiating the Landscape and co-editor of the journal Water History.

Table des matières :

Preface
Introduction: Medieval Waters
200–450: Late Antique Gaul

1. Poetries of Place
   450–750: The Merovingians
2. Rivers of Risk
3. River Resources
   750–950: The Carolingians
4. Rivers and Memory
   950–1050: The Year 1000 Question
5. Ruptured Rivers
6. Meanderings
   1050–1250: A New World?
7. The Same River Twice.

Informations pratiques :

Ellen F. Arnold, Medieval Riverscapes. Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, c. 300–1100, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024 ; 1 vol., 328 p. ISBN : 978-1-00929-939-8. Prix : GBP 85,00.

Source : Cambridge University Press