Description: When men and women in early medieval England thought about the world around them, they did so in ways that often strike us as strange. In their surviving writings, we are confronted continually with unfamiliar ideas - about the creatures and beings which populated the world, about the forces and phenomena which shaped it, and about the ways in which human beings might enact change upon it through ritual, magic, and prayer. Although unfamiliar, these ideas give us important indications of how early medieval English thinkers characterized and categorized their surroundings and their experiences. Of substantial interest to many of them was the question of how they might distinguish correctly between what was 'natural' in the world, and what was not. This Element examines what that distinction meant to the inhabitants of early medieval England, and under what circumstances they felt compelled to explore it.
Review Quotes: 'Sowerby produces a condensed and welcoming introduction to the major debates and approaches of his subject while also managing to sketch out ways in which historians can break down inherited assumptions. This Element does well to show the benefits of thinking in terms of processes rather than fixed qualities, and to explore how, when, and why medieval authors chose to discuss the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural. It advocates a flexible outlook to uncover a broad range of what was possible, rather than limiting ourselves to inflexible and static lists of what 'was'. In so doing, it evinces the wide-ranging spectrum of supernatural worlds (with emphasis on the plural) which different authors could draw on, imagine, and contest.' Jonathan Tickle, Parergon