Download or read book Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages written by Aleksander Pluskowski and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text compares responses to wolves, focusing on two regions, Britain and southern Scandinavia. It explores the distribution of wolves in the landscape, their potential impact as predators on both animals and people, and their use as commodities, in literature, art, cosmology and identity.
Download or read book The History of the Wolf in Western Civilization written by Malcolm Drew Donalson and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the wolf is primarily that of the wolf of Biblical metaphor and medieval legend, rather than the wolf of reality. Yet, it demonstrates for students and teachers alike how the wolf of reality underwent a long-term demonization in western culture, largely as a result of the literary wolf. It accomplishes this, first, through a close investigation of the pertinent passages of the Scriptures and select references in the works of the Church Fathers.
Download or read book The Wolves of Paris written by Daniel Pratt Mannix and published by E P Dutton. This book was released on 1978 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An historically and zoologically accurate reconstruction of the terrorizing of the French countryside in the 1430s by a pack of man-eating wolves and of the animals' invasion of the city of Paris itself
Download or read book An Environmental History of the Middle Ages written by John Aberth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle Ages was a critical and formative time for Western approaches to our natural surroundings. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages is a unique and unprecedented cultural survey of attitudes towards the environment during this period. Exploring the entire medieval period from 500 to 1500, and ranging across the whole of Europe, from England and Spain to the Baltic and Eastern Europe, John Aberth focuses his study on three key areas: the natural elements of air, water, and earth; the forest; and wild and domestic animals. Through this multi-faceted lens, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages sheds fascinating new light on the medieval environmental mindset. It will be essential reading for students, scholars and all those interested in the Middle Ages
Download or read book Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia written by Michael D. J. Bintley and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2015 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the depiction of animals, birds and insects in early medieval material culture, from texts to carvings to the landscape itself. For people in the early Middle Ages, the earth, air, water and ether teemed with other beings. Some of these were sentient creatures that swam, flew, slithered or stalked through the same environments inhabited by their human contemporaries. Others were objects that a modern beholder would be unlikely to think of as living things, but could yet be considered to possess a vitality that rendered them potent. Still others were things half glimpsed on a dark night or seen only in the mind's eye; strange beasts that haunted dreams and visions or inhabited exotic lands beyond the compass of everyday knowledge. This book discusses the various ways in which the early English and Scandinavians thought about and represented these other inhabitants of their world, and considers the multi-faceted nature of the relationship between people and beasts. Drawing on the evidence of material culture, art, language, literature, place-names and landscapes, the studies presented here reveal a world where the boundaries between humans, animals, monsters and objects were blurred and often permeable, and where to represent the bestial could be to holda mirror to the self. Michael D.J. Bintley is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University; Thomas J.T. Williams is a doctoral researcher at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. Contributors: Noël Adams, John Baker, Michael D. J. Bintley, Sue Brunning, László Sándor Chardonnens, Della Hooke, Eric Lacey, Richard North, Marijane Osborn, Victoria Symons, Thomas J. Williams
Download or read book The Ecology of the English Outlaw in Medieval Literature written by Sarah Harlan-Haughey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguing that outlaw narratives become particularly popular and poignant at moments of national ecological and political crisis, Sarah Harlan-Haughey examines the figure of the outlaw in Anglo-Saxon poetry and Old English exile lyrics such as Beowulf, works dealing with the life and actions of Hereward, the Anglo-Norman romance of Fulk Fitz Waryn, the Robin Hood ballads, and the Tale of Gamelyn. Although the outlaw's wilderness shelter changed dramatically from the menacing fens and forests of Anglo-Saxon England to the bright, known, and mapped greenwood of the late outlaw romances and ballads, Harlan-Haughey observes that the outlaw remained strongly animalistic, other, and liminal. His brutality points to a deep literary ambivalence towards wilderness and the animal, at the same time that figures such as the Anglo-Saxon resistance fighter Hereward, the brutal yet courtly Gamelyn, and Robin Hood often represent a lost England imagined as pristine and forested. In analyzing outlaw literature as a form of nature writing, Harlan-Haughey suggests that it often reveals more about medieval anxieties respecting humanity's place in nature than it does about the political realities of the period.
Download or read book The Wolf written by Ian Convery and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insights into the changing human attitudes towards wild nature through the depiction of wolves in human culture and heritage. Few animals arouse such strong opinion as the wolf. It occupies a contested, ambiguous, yet central role in human culture and heritage. It appears as both an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil. Offering a mirror to different human attitudes, beliefs, and values, the wolf is, arguably, the species that plays the greatest role in shaping our views on what nature is or should be. North America and, more recently, Europe have witnessed a remarkable return of the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) to eco-systems. The essays collected here explore aspects of this recovery, and consider the history, literature and myth surrounding this iconic species. There are chapters on wolf taxonomy, including the coywolf, the red wolf, and the many faces of the dingo. We also meet the Tasmanian wolf and encounter Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. The book explores the challenges of separating fact from fiction and superstition, and our willingness to co-exist with large carnivores in the twenty-first century. Biologists, historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, conservationists and museologists will all find riches in the detail presented in this wolf collection.
Download or read book The Edges of the Medieval World written by Gerhard Jaritz and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Middles Ages, the edges of one's world could represent different meanings. On the one hand, they might have been situated in far-away regions, mainly in the east and north, that one most often only knew from hearsay and which were inhabited by strange beings: humans with their faces on their chest, without a mouth, or with dog heads. On the other hand, the edges of one's world could just mean the borders of the community where one lived and that one sometimes might not have had the possibility to cross during one's whole life.In this volume specialists from eight European countries offer their ideas about different edges of the medieval world and contribute to a discussion that has been increasing greatly in Medieval Studies in recent times.
Download or read book Of Wilderness and Wolves written by Paul L. Errington and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I was a predator, myself, and lived close to the land.” With these words, Paul L. Errington begins this lost classic. Now in print for the first time, the book celebrates a key predator: the wolf. One of the most influential biologists of the twentieth century, Errington melds his expertise in wildlife biology with his love for natural beauty to create a visionary and often moving re-examination of humanity’s relationship with these magnificent and frequently maligned animals. Tracing his own relationship with wolves from his rural South Dakota upbringing through his formative years as a professional trapper to his landmark work as an internationally renowned wildlife biologist, Errington delves into our irrational fear of wolves. He forthrightly criticizes what he views as humanity’s prejudice against an animal that continues to serve as the very emblem of the wilderness we claim to love, but that too often falls prey to our greed and ignorance. A friend of Aldo Leopold, Errington was an important figure in the conservation efforts in the first half of the twentieth century. During his lifetime, wolves were considered vicious, wantonly destructive predators; by the mid-1900s, they had been almost completely eliminated from the lower forty-eight states. Their reintroduction to their historical range today remains controversial. Lyrical yet unsentimental, Of Wilderness and Wolves provides a strong and still-timely dose of ecological realism for the abusive mismanagement of our natural resources. It is a testament to our shortsightedness and to Errington’s vision that this book, its publication so long delayed, still speaks directly to our environmental crises.
Download or read book Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages written by E. Joy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-12-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together contemporary popular entertainment, current political subjects, and medieval history and culture to investigate the intersecting and often tangled relations between politics, aesthetics, reality and fiction, in relation to issues of morality, identity, social values, power, and justice, both in the past and the present.
Download or read book Wolf written by Garry Marvin and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feared and revered, the wolf has been admired as a powerful hunter and symbol of the wild and reviled for its danger to humans and livestock. Garry Marvin reveals in Wolf how the ways in which wolves are imagined has had far-reaching implications for how actual wolves are treated by humans. Indigenous hunting societies originally respected the wolf as a fellow hunter, but with the domestication of animals the wolf became regarded as an enemy due to its attacks on livestock. Wolves, as a result, developed a reputation as creatures of evil. In children’s literature, they were depicted as the intruder from the wild who preys on the innocent. And in popular culture, the wolf became the creature that evil humans can transform into—the dreaded werewolf. Fear of this enigmatic creature, Marvin shows, led to an attempt to eradicate it as a species. However, with the development of scientific understanding of wolves and their place in ecological systems and the growth of popular environmentalism, the wolf has been rethought and reimagined. The wolf now has a legion of new supporters who regard it as a charismatic creature of the newly valued wild and wilderness. Marvin investigates the latest scientific understanding of the wolf, as well as its place in literature, history, and folklore, offering insights into our changing attitudes towards wolves.
Download or read book Monstrous Fishes and the Mead Dark Sea written by Vicki E. Szabo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-01-31 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval people viewed whales in complex and contradictory ways, from marvelous to monstrous to mundane, heaven-sent or hell-bent. Despite this, whales are conspicuous in their absence from most historical and archaeological dialogues on the Middle Ages. Drawing upon a wealth of legal, literary and material evidence, this work details the ways in which whales were sought out and scavenged at sea and shore, fought over in legal and physical battles, and prized for meat, bone and fuel. Using Old Norse sagas, laws and material culture, alongside comparative historical and ethnographic evidence, Monstrous Fishes and the Mead-Dark Sea reexamines the value of whales in the medieval North Atlantic world.
Download or read book Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts written by Elizabeth Marshall and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and sympathetic investigation of the depiction of wolves in early medieval literature, recuperating their reputation.
Download or read book The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr written by Roderick Dale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The viking berserkr is an iconic warrior normally associated with violent fits of temper and the notorious berserksgangr or berserker frenzy. This book challenges the orthodox view that these men went ‘berserk’ in the modern English sense of the word. It examines all the evidence for medieval perceptions of berserkir and builds a model of how the medieval audience would have viewed them. Then, it extrapolates a Viking Age model of berserkir from this model, and supports the analysis with anthropological and archaeological evidence, to create a new and more accurate paradigm of the Viking Age berserkr and his place in society. This shows that berserkir were the champions of lords and kings, members of the social elite, and that much of what is believed about them is based on 17th-century and later scholarship and mythologizing: the medieval audience would have had a very different understanding of the Old Norse berserkr from that which people have now. The book sets out a challenge to rethink and reframe our perceptions of the past in a way that is less influenced by our own modern ideas. The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr will appeal to researchers and students alike studying the Viking Age, Medieval History and Old Norse Literature.
Download or read book Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages written by Dominic Alexander and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2008 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thorough investigation of the saint and animal topos: its origins, growth and development.
Download or read book In the company of wolves written by Sam George and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays presents innovative research from a variety of perspectives on the cultural significance of wolves, children raised by wolves, and werewolves, as portrayed in different media and genres.
Download or read book Conspiracy of Wolves written by Candace Robb and published by Severn House Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a prominent citizen is murdered, former Captain of the Guard Owen Archer is persuaded out of retirement to investigate in this gripping medieval mystery. 1374. When a member of one of York’s most prominent families is found dead in the woods, his throat torn out, rumours spread like wildfire that wolves are running loose throughout the city. Persuaded to investigate by the victim’s father, Owen Archer is convinced that a human killer is responsible. But before he can gather sufficient evidence to prove his case, a second body is discovered, stabbed to death. Is there a connection? What secrets are contained within the victim’s household? And what does apprentice healer Alisoun know that she’s not telling? Teaming up with Geoffrey Chaucer, who is in York on a secret mission on behalf of Prince Edward, Owen’s enquiries will draw him headlong into a deadly conspiracy.
