Landscapes of the Normans : Ways of Seeing

Landscapes of the Normans : Ways of Seeing

Investigator : Leonie Hicks, Canterbury Christ Church University, Leverhulme Trust, Major Research Fellowship 2022

This project uses chronicles from Normandy, England Southern Italy and the Holy Land to show how medieval historians understood and used the landscape, both real and imagined, to create narratives about the past. From the beginning of the eleventh century to roughly the mid-twelfth century, the activities of the Normans in Normandy, England, Southern Italy and the Holy Land inspired a collection of chronicles and biographies reflecting their migration to and conquest of other lands, the formation of new polities, and the medieval writers attitudes towards these developments. Whereas some of these works are closely related, notably the group derived from the original historian of the Normans, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, others, particularly the southern Italian histories were independent of each other.

This project can, therefore, determine whether there were common ideas circulating in central medieval Europe of how, when and what to write about the landscape derived from a broader shared historical culture that extended beyond a close connection with the Normans. The rise of environmental concerns in recent decades, reflected in the development of environmental humanities more broadly, allows for a sustained analysis not only of the medieval past and the role of the landscape within it, but also how theoretical frameworks that underpin landscape studies have been constructed in the modern.

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Photo: castle of Falaise