Water in Medieval Literature

An Ecocritical Reading

By (author) Albrecht Classen

Publication date:

15 August 2017

Length of book:

358 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498539845

Ecocritical thinking has sensitized us more than ever before to the tremendous importance of water for human life, as it is richly reflected in the world of literature. The great relevance of water also in the Middle Ages might come as a surprise for many readers, but the evidence assembled here confirms that also medieval poets were keenly aware of the importance of water to sustain all life, to provide understanding of life’s secrets, to mirror love, and to connect the individual with God. In eleven chapters major medieval European authors and their works are discussed here, taking us from the world of Old Norse to Irish and Latin literature, to German, French, English, and Italian romances and other narratives.

Introduction – Theoretical, Methodological, and Interdisciplinary Reflections
Chapter One – Water, Literature, Symbolism, and Epistemology in the Pre-Modern Age: A Pan-European Perspective
Chapter Two – Water and Voyages in the Goliardic Epic Poem of Herzog Ernst: Transformation and Maturation through Travel into the Mysterious Orient
Chapter Three – The Experience with Water in The Voyage of St. Brendan: Spiritual Epistemology in the Western Seas
Chapter Four – Water Worlds in the Lais by Marie de France: The Search for Happiness in a Fluid World
Chapter Five – Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius: The Religious Transformation Through Water
Chapter Six – Water Symbolism in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival: The Material and the Spiritual Dimension of Water in a Middle High German Grail Romance
Chapter Seven –Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Mystical The Flowing Light of the Divinity: Spirituality, Liquidity, and Epistemology
Chapter Eight – Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1351): Narrative Explorations of Tears, Water in Fountains, Wells, and in the Mediterranean
Chapter Nine – Water as Markers of Identity, Space, and Time in the Icelandic Saga Njal’s Saga: Travel, War, and Water in the World of Old Norse Literature
Chapter Ten – Water Creatures, Wells, the Other Life, Hybridity, and the Aquatic: The Myth of Melusine in the Verse Romance by Jean d’Arras
Chapter Eleven – Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron and other Problems with Water: Flooding, Voyaging, Sexual Violence, and Refuge
Epilogue

This study argues that water, an underexamined motif in medieval literature, merits closer attention, especially given recent developments in ecocriticism. Seeking to remedy this neglect and show how central water was to early literature, Classen (German studies, Univ. of Arizona) offers a set of ten studies of the symbolic and spiritual uses of water in European works from the 12th through the 16th centuries, including the Goliardic Herzog Ernst; The Voyage of St. Brendan; the Lais of Marie de France; Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius; Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival; Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead; Boccaccio’s Decameron; the Icelandic Njál’s Sage; Jean d’Arras’s version of the Melusine myth; and Margaret of Navarre’s Heptameron. The book’s introduction touches on a range of other medieval texts, including Beowulf, the Romance of the Rose, and stories from the Gesta Romanorum…. Classen’s book is compendious, comparativist, and learned…. [I]t is a good place to start thinking about the significance of water in early texts. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.