Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes

Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions. This book accepts the natural world as such by investigating how Anglo-Saxons interacted with and conceived of their lived environments. Examining Old English poems, such as Beowulf and Judith, as well as descriptions of natural events from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other documentary texts, Heide Estes shows that Anglo-Saxon ideologies which view nature as diametrically opposed to humans, and the natural world as designed for human use, have become deeply embedded in our cultural heritage, language, and more.

"Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes makes a compelling case for the medieval world as a profitable site for further exploration by ecocritical and ecofeminist theorists." - Renée R. Trilling, Medieval Feminist Forum Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, Volume 54, Number 2, 2019 "This book is one of the most important to come out this year, as it is not only one which articulates interesting and important nuances about Old English literature, but it is also an activist-minded piece which raises significant questions about our present anthropocentric lives and the state of the medieval field. Thus, in her analysis of the sea in Beowulf, saints’ lives, and biblical epics, Estes draws parallels between Anglo-Saxon notions of the sea as a limitless resource with presentday hyperconsumerist treatment of the environment, and her discussion of Guthlac’s appropriation of the fenland wilderness compares it with colonialist ideologies which justified invasion and enslavement as processes civilizing wilderness regions." - Eric Lacey and Simon Thomson, The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 98, Issue 1, 2019

Heide Estes is Professor of English at Monmouth University. She has published Old and Middle English language and literature, focusing on sexuality and gender, the reception of Jews, and disability. She is editor with Haruko Momma of Old English Across the Curriculum: Contexts and Pedagogies, a special issue of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching forthcoming in 2016. She is founder of the scholarly group Medieval Ecocriticisms.