IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 1615: Changing Climates, The Preternatural, I: Physical and Literary Climates of the Preternatural
Thursday 8 July 2021, 11.15-12.45
| Organiser: | Henry Marsh, Department of History, University of Exeter |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Tabitha Stanmore, Department of History, University of Bristol |
| Paper 1615-a | Nature's Wonders in East and West: Physical and Epistemological Climates in the Colonial Spaces of Gerald of Wales's Wondrous West (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Learning (The Classical Inheritance) |
| Paper 1615-b | Describing the Preternatural: Delineating the Intellectual Climate of Late Medieval Chroniclers (Language: English) Index terms: Education, Historiography - Medieval |
| Paper 1615-c | The Tamarix of the Witch: Marshes, Malaria, and Witchcraft in the Popular Beliefs of Maremma, Tuscany (Language: English) Index terms: Folk Studies, Lay Piety |
| Abstract | Papers in this session engage with how the preternatural was described and imagined within different intellectual and physical climates. The first paper examines how the intellectual climate regarding marvels and imperium in the Angevin court was used to represent a similar intellectual expansion into the far west, using imagery and knowledge from the east. The second paper considers the mental landscape and climate of chroniclers through the descriptions and placement of preternatural phenomena within a physical context. The third paper explores how the physical climate in central Italy impacted medieval folk beliefs. The marshes and risk of malaria in the Tuscany region affected health from antiquity to early modern times, which in turn affected how inhabitants understood both benevolent and malevolent magic. |