Ecocriticism and Medieval Art

In this graduate seminar, we will examine how medieval literary and visual culture shaped and reflected people’s understanding of God’s Creation—animals, plants, rocks, planets—and humanity’s place within it. Nature was seen both as a hostile environment, a place of temporary exile after humankind’s banishment from Paradise, and as a machine, bearing the divine blueprint to be decoded and utilized for nourishment, medicine, and amusement. The Church, in a careful balancing act, had to reconcile the disdain for nature mandated in Genesis with the material world it relied upon for its own survival. To explore these tensions, we will engage with recent ecocritical methods, drawing on the approaches in light of the so-called material and cultural turns, and examine historical texts and images related to Neo-Platonic cosmology, the wood of the cross, agriculture and cultural techniques, folkloric traditions, stones and sedimentation, stargazing, architecture, herbal medicine, indigeneity, and natural theology, among other topics. A key theme throughout the semester will be the extent to which ideas and ideals rooted in the Middle Ages continue to shape the ways we interact with the natural world. Museum visits to the New York Botanical Garden’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and The Cloisters’ gardens are mandatory.