Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France - Toward an Environmental History

Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades songs written by the trouv-s of northern France to the physical terrain and climate of the lands on which theirauthors lived. In doing so, she analyzes the different ways in which composers'' lived environments related to their songs and categorizes their use of nature imagery as realistic, aspirational, or nostalgic. Demonstrating a cycle of mutual impact between nature and culture, Saltzstein argues that trouv- songsinfluenced the ways particular groups of medieval people defined their identities, encouraging them to view themselves as belonging to specific landscapes.The book offers close readings of love songs, pastourelles, motets, and rondets