Wildness, Wilderness, and Ireland: Medieval and Early-Modern Patterns in the Demarcation of Civility

Abstract

In the Middle Ages the great contrast was not, as it had been in antiquity, between the city and the country (urbs and rus, as the Romans put it) but between nature and culture, expressed in terms of the "opposition between what was built, cultivated, and inhabited (city, castle, village) and what was essentially wild (the ocean and forest, the western equivalents of the eastern desert), that is, between men who lived in groups and those who lived in solitude." 1 Culture and Civility, Wildness and Wilderness History and the social sciences are linked in a close but often slightly uneasy relationship. If in the following pages I address the historical or political impact of sociocultural attitudes concerning wildness and civility, I address an overlap between these two spheres of scholarship, where different, sometimes incompatible methodological presuppositions apply. In the end, therefore, we shall have to face the question whether this type of topic aims to give historical or social-scientific information and what the difference is between those two. Meanwhile, the interest of this kind of topic is manifest, and the fact that social-scientific and historical interest can be combined fruitfully has been amply proven by many illustrious scholars.

On the Edge of Improvement: Rathlin Island and the Modern World

“…110-115;also see Drayton 2000;Orser 2005 A self-righteous attitude toward Ireland and the Irish had been a pervasive feature of English views since the medieval period. From Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century to Edmund Spenser in the sixteenth century, Ireland was regarded as an agriculturally underdeveloped island populated by a barbarous and backward people (Leerssen 1995). English intervention would save Ireland's natural resources from the Irish and in doing so make the people contented farmers (Drayton 2000, p. 55).…”

O selvagem na "gesta Dei": história e alteridade no pensamento medieval

“…25, nº 50 Pela via da doutrina cristã, o homem é apenas um meio para a consecução dos fins estabelecidos por Deus, a quem cabe determinar, de tempos a tempos, os objetos que os seres humanos desejam. Todo agente humano sabe o que quer e procura atingir o seu objetivo, mas não sabe por que razão o quer: a razão por que o quer está no fato de Deus o ter levado a querê-lo, a fim de fazer avançar o processo de concretização de Seus desígnios.…”

“…O agrios grego era o espaço silvestre/selvagem com a mesma conotação dada pelo imaginário medieval de limite do mundo cultivado. 50 O homem selvagem medieval podia ser imaginado com um tipo físico muito próximo daquele do europeu, com uma exceção: seu corpo era coberto de pêlos. Mas era também representado como gigante ou como anão, e nisso, como em outras características, partilhava do bestiário da "etnografia pliniana".…”

Extracting Culture or Injecting Nature? Rewilding in Transatlantic Perspective

“…Witness the number of Germans who today flock to Monument Valley, the Redwoods, or Alaska. The demand is so large that in summer Lufthansa's subsidiary, Condor Air, offers twice-weekly nonstop flights from Frankfurt to Anchorage (Leerssen 1995).…”