Medieval Landscape and the Encyclopedic Tradition (article)

Medieval Landscape and the Encyclopedic Tradition
By Walter Cahn, for Yale French Studies (1991)

This article is most irrelevant (though well-written). So I'm just going to include some quotes I found interesting.

"Scholars who from the nineteenth century onward sought to chart the history of a concern with landscape in art and literature were struck first and foremost by the silence of the Middle Ages on this score, by absence, in other words, or at any rate, by the apparent lack of a concrete expression in the medieval period of anything resembling a conception of the natural world in our sense of the term" (11).

I see.

"...when medieval artists turned to nature, their vision was transfixed by 'the icy winds of doctrine,' and flowers and trees lost their lively quality to become prototypes of the divine" (12).

I realize Cahn is speaking of art and not literature, but I think this bears in interesting ways on Mandeville's treatment of nature. Sometimes, he is concerned largely (or at least clearly) with the imprint of the divine, and only rarely does he mention nature for its own sake, but where he shines is in a middle ground in which nature is important for the way it reflects culture.

"...much encyclopedic writing about the natural world is mere enumeration and description, leavened by etymological word play, and conceived as an inventory of the Lord's creation, a more or less systematic supplement to the record of the divine work given in the opening verses of Genesis" (14).

See above. Then, Cahn goes on to discuss Marvels of the East, and the illustrations within (focusing on an illustration of a balm tree). He draws attention to the way the illustration evokes the innate qualities of the plant, and the importance of space in the composition.

Later in the article:

"...the rendering of nature in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages is often made by way of personifications, not only of winds, but of other entities like rivers, the earth and natura herself(17).

Which just leads me to think generally about figurative nature and the use of plants as anything (and everything) other than specific objects/scientific specimens in the Travels.