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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages: Comparative Contexts

Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages: Comparative Contexts

Bintley, Michael
Salonius, Pippa
Akkach, Samer

Paperback

Series: Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages, Book 8

Literary CriticismEnvironmental Studies

ISBN10: 1843847809
ISBN13: 9781843847809
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: Jul 7 2026
Pages: 308
Weight: 0.96
Height: 0.65 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
WINNER: AFCEMS Prize 2024

Highlights human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.

Forests, with their interlacing networks of trees and secret patterns of communication, are powerful entities for thinking-with. A majestic terrestrial community of arboreal others, their presence echoes, entangles, and resonates deeply with the human world. The essays collected here aim to highlight human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when, whether symbol and metaphor, or actual and real, their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.

The chapters interrogate the pre-Anthropocene environment, reflecting on trees as metaphors for kinship and knowledge as they appear in literary, historical, art-historical, and philosophical sources. They examine images of trees and trees in-themselves across a range of environmental, material, and intellectual contexts, and consider how humans used arboreal and rhizomatic forms to negotiate bodies of knowledge and processes of transition. Looking beyond medieval Europe, they include discussion of parallel developments in the Islamic world and that of the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.

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