Water in Medieval Literature

Water in Medieval Literature PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498539858
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This book uncovers the tremendous importance of water for European medieval literature, focusing on a large number of writers and poets. Water proves to be highly meaningful in religious, literary, and factual narratives insofar as it emerges as a central catalyst to bring about epiphany and epistemological and spiritual illumination.

Water in Medieval Literature

Water in Medieval Literature PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498539858
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book

Book Description
This book uncovers the tremendous importance of water for European medieval literature, focusing on a large number of writers and poets. Water proves to be highly meaningful in religious, literary, and factual narratives insofar as it emerges as a central catalyst to bring about epiphany and epistemological and spiritual illumination.

Transformative Waters in Late-medieval Literature

Transformative Waters in Late-medieval Literature PDF Author: Hetta Elizabeth Howes
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843846128
Category : Literature, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
A consideration of the metaphor of water in religious literature, especially in relation to women.

Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000

Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000 PDF Author: Paolo Squatriti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521522069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
A discussion of the relationship between people and water in medieval Italy, first published in 1998.

Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England

Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England PDF Author: Daniel Anlezark
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503588889
Category : Bodies of water
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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.00This 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.

Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110523388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
While most people today take hygiene and medicine for granted, they both have had their own history. We can gain deep insights into the pre-modern world by studying its health-care system, its approaches to medicine, and concept of hygiene. Already the early Middle Ages witnessed great interest in bathing (hot and cold), swimming, and good personal hygiene. Medical activities grew over time, but even early medieval monks were already great experts in treating the sick. The contributions examine literary, medical, historical texts and images and probe the information we can glean from them. The interdisciplinary approach of this volume makes it possible to view this large field in a complex and diversified manner, taking into account both early medieval and early modern treatises on medicine, water, bathing, and health. Such a cultural-historical perspective creates a most valuable bridge connecting literary and scientific documents under the umbrella of the history of mentality and history of everyday life. The volume does not aim at idealizing the past, but it definitely intends to deconstruct modern myths about the 'dirty' and 'unhealthy' Middle Ages and early modern age.

Floods and Long-Term Water-Level Changes in Medieval Hungary

Floods and Long-Term Water-Level Changes in Medieval Hungary PDF Author: Andrea Kiss
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319388649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
The book provides an overview of the floods and major hydrological changes that occurred in the medieval Hungarian kingdom (covering the majority of the Carpathian Basin) between 1000 and 1500 AD. The analysis was based on contemporary documentary evidence presented for the first time and the results of archaeological and scientific investigations. Beyond the evidence on individual flood events, the book includes a comprehensive overview of short-, medium-, and long-term changes detected in a hydrologically sensitive environment during the transition period between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It also discusses the possible causes (including climate and human intervention) and the consequences for the physical and human environment, namely the related hydro-morphological changes, short- and long-term social response, and human perception issues.

Water Technology in the Middle Ages

Water Technology in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Roberta J. Magnusson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080186626X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Focusing attention on gravity-fed water-flow systems in medieval cities and monasteries, Water Technology in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks after the Roman Empire challenges the view that hydraulic engineering died with the Romans and remained moribund until the Renaissance. Roberta Magnusson explores the systems' technologies -- how they worked, what uses the water served -- and also the social rifts that created struggles over access to this basic necessity. Mindful of theoretical questions about what hastens technological change and how society and technology mutually influence one another, the author supplies a thoughtful and instructive study. Archeological, historical, and literary evidence vividly depicts those who designed, constructed, and used medieval water systems and demonstrates a shift from a public-administrative to a private-innovative framework -- one that argues for the importance of local initiatives. "The following chapters attempt to chart a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of technological and social determinism. While writing them, I have tried to strike a balance between the technical and human aspects of medieval hydraulic systems, and to remember that beneath the welter of documents and diffusion patterns, configurations and components, ordinances and expenditures, lie the perceptions, the choices, and often the plain hard work of individual men and women." -- from the Preface

Thirst

Thirst PDF Author: Steven Mithen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Water is an endangered resource, imperiled by population growth, mega-urbanization, and climate change. Scientists project that by 2050, freshwater shortages will affect 75 percent of the global population. Steven Mithen puts our current crisis in historical context by exploring 10,000 years of humankind’s management of water. Thirst offers cautionary tales of civilizations defeated by the challenges of water control, as well as inspirational stories about how technological ingenuity has sustained communities in hostile environments. As in his acclaimed, genre-defying After the Ice and The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen blends archaeology, current science, and ancient literature to give us a rich new picture of how our ancestors lived. Since the Neolithic Revolution, people have recognized water as a commodity and source of economic power and have manipulated its flow. History abounds with examples of ambitious water management projects and hydraulic engineering—from the Sumerians, whose mastery of canal building and irrigation led to their status as the first civilization, to the Nabataeans, who created a watery paradise in the desert city of Petra, to the Khmer, who built a massive inland sea at Angkor, visible from space. As we search for modern solutions to today’s water crises, from the American Southwest to China, Mithen also looks for lessons in the past. He suggests that we follow one of the most unheeded pieces of advice to come down from ancient times. In the words of Li Bing, whose waterworks have irrigated the Sichuan Basin since 256 BC, “Work with nature, not against it.”

The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy

The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy PDF Author: Michael P. Kucher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000143694
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The book reviews scholarly literature and archival sources including maps and diagrams, to better situate Siena's achievement in urban history and broadens our understanding of medieval technology and urban life.

Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints)

Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints) PDF Author: Robert Bartlett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781626548893
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Although seemingly bizarre and barbaric in modern times, trial by ordeal-the subjection of the accused to undergo harsh tests such as walking over hot irons or being bound and cast into water-played an integral, and often staggeringly effective, role in justice systems for centuries. In "Trial by Fire and Water," Robert Bartlett examines the workings of trial by ordeal from the time of its first appearance in the barbarian law codes, tracing its use by Christian societies down to its last days as a test for witchcraft in modern Europe and America. Bartlett presents a critique of recent theories about the operation and the decline of the practice, and he attempts to make sense of the ordeal as a working institution and to explain its disappearance. Finally, he considers some of the general historical problems of understanding a society in which religious beliefs were so fundamental. Robert Bartlett is Wardlaw Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews.