The Palgrave Handbook of Medieval Literature and Science

This handbook presents a comprehensive series of originally commissioned essays exploring how key topics in natural philosophy and related discourses (what we now call 'science') from the early medieval period to the fifteenth century were reflected, refracted, and transformed by writers in the Middle Ages working within a range of genres from heroic verse, maxim, and riddle to romance, dream vision, moral tale, and allegory. The volume spans the fields of astronomy, astrology, and cosmology; physics, mathematics, and metaphysics; geography and meteorology; flora, fauna, and the natural world; and the human body, mind, and medicine. Each section commences with contextual essays by specialists in these disciplines, exploring the key concepts, sources, and influences that comprise medieval scientia--the knowledge or understanding acquired by study. Subsequent chapters consider medieval science's transmission, interpretation, transformation, and recirculation in literary genres and texts from the early medieval period to the fifteenth century. The volume also includes individual case studies treating key authors. While the focus is on English literature and thought, this is situated within a wider international context of cultural exchange, taking account of the classical inheritance, Germanic and Scandinavian traditions, medieval European intellectual culture, and the transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world. In illuminating the ways in which medieval attitudes to science challenge traditional divisions and binaries, and the creative means in which writers across genres drew on ideas related to science and natural philosophy to shape their work, the volume resonates with contemporary ideas concerning the dynamic relationship of human and natural worlds, the nature of embodied being in the world, and the fluidity of animal and human, body and mind, human and technology.

This magnificent panoply of thirty-four essays by a distinguished cast of contributors reminds one of the ambition with which medieval and Renaissance encyclopedists brought together vast amounts of information within a single work. The range of topics covered is impressive indeed, as is the fact that materials in both Latin and several vernaculars are given ample space, thereby ensuring that diverse sources of knowledge are respected. Fine detail and nuance are not lost in the process of reaching general overviews. The writing is cogent, accessible, and appealing. Each chapter offers a significant scholarly contribution in its own right, while opening the door to further study of the given subject. This collection is set fair to be the initial go-to volume for anyone interested in the many intersections of medieval literature and science.
--Alastair Minnis, Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University, USA

In The Palgrave Handbook to Medieval Literature and Science, Huxtable and Saunders have assembled a 'who's who' of medievalists--ranging from early career researchers to éminences grises--who offer a wide-ranging survey of the many ways that premodern scientific learning was represented in literary form, from alchemy and astronomy to medicine and physics. While Old and Middle English literary history has pride of place, chapters on Latin, French, Italian, and Norse literature round out the volume, making it an essential element on the medievalist's bookshelf.
--Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, USA

Engaging and instructive for scholars and general readers alike, this collection of studies illuminates the deep background of a wide range of the imaginative literature of English and the Western Middle Ages. Medieval science, from cosmology to psychology, was grounded in God, but by starting from literary texts this book provides ready access to what at first might seem an alien way of thinking.
--Helen Cooper, Emeritus Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English, University of Cambridge, UK

This is a remarkable volume which manages to skilfully tread that most difficult of fine lines between serious academic rigour and accessibility. The editors are to be highly commended for bringing together and organising 34 wide-ranging chapters from an international field of high calibre scholars working in the area of medieval studies. The task of collating such diverse subjects as astronomy in Old English Boethius, medieval geography and sense experience in Chaucer (to name but a few) might rightly be regarded as herculean, but this volume has pulled it off with considerable panache. I know of no other work that quite so successfully manages to set out and explore the intersection of medieval literature and science and it is surely set to become the go to text on the subject for anyone interested in this area of history.
--Jack P. Cunningham, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Lincoln Bishop University, UK