Book contents
- Landscape in Middle English Romance
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
- Landscape in Middle English Romance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Copyright
- Abbreviations
- Digging into Romance
- Chapter 1 A (Disappearing?) World of Opportunity
- Chapter 2 Chasing the Surf
- Chapter 3 Across the Sea
- Chapter 4 “In His Contrie at Hame”
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Chapter 4 - “In His Contrie at Hame”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2021
- Landscape in Middle English Romance
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
- Landscape in Middle English Romance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Copyright
- Abbreviations
- Digging into Romance
- Chapter 1 A (Disappearing?) World of Opportunity
- Chapter 2 Chasing the Surf
- Chapter 3 Across the Sea
- Chapter 4 “In His Contrie at Hame”
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Summary
Chapter 4 turns to literary descriptions of explicitly British landscapes, but to examine ideas of the “foreign at home.” I discuss here how the ballad-romances Sir Colling the Knycht, Eger and Grime, and Thomas of Erceldoune, characterized Anglo-Scottish Border landscapes via rugged topography and extreme weather, and emphasized their proximity to the otherworlds of Fairy and Hell. In particular, I argue that these texts anthropomorphize non-human environmental forces as fairy adversaries, and in the process conflate contemporary ecological, economic, and political anxieties. I also examine how these topics get developed in the early modern ballads that are based on some of these romances, explaining how song-texts persist in communicating some of these same ideas regarding Scottish and northern English landscapes to later audiences. This chapter, then, allows me to consider how the issues I raise throughout the book form an important influence upon postmedieval understandings of human relationships with local and global landscapes.
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- Landscape in Middle English RomanceThe Medieval Imagination and the Natural World, pp. 133 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021