Ellen F. Arnold

This is a really interesting look at how the natural environment and a community's relationship with nature could be used to construct monastic identity in the early medieval period. Ellen Arnold takes as her case study the twin monasteries of Stavelot-Malmedy, located deep in the forests of the Ardennes, and stresses the ways in which the monks of these communities both shaped the physical landscape around them (through construction, farming and forestry) but also the cultural and religious landscapes through story-telling and the use of relics. It's an imaginative and appealing kind of history—what Arnold terms an "environmental exegesis"—and provides some interesting new ways of thinking about and approaching medieval sources.

The book as a whole could have benefited from a firmer editorial hand—there were a couple of sentences which made me wince because they shouldn't have made it into a printed text, such as "[she] gave Stavelot some of her holdings in Braz to the monastery of Stavelot" (72). More importantly, though, it needs more clarity in the definition of some of its key terms, and I think more engagement with the documents of practice as opposed to the narrative sources. Still, an engaging and thought-provoking work; I think Negotiating the Landscape may serve as a catalyst for new works in this burgeoning field.… (altro)