Literary Landscapes

Download or read book Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes written by Heide Estes and published by Environmental Humanities in Pre-modern Cultures. This book was released on 2017 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 that 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.