This volume concerns premodern understandings of vegetal nature that encompass multiple semantics and perspectives. Scholars from the disparate fields of art history, literature, and religious studies present tantalizing studies of trees and plants in sacred and secular thought. Some discuss the concept of the Book of Nature and its implications. Others explore narratives of symbiosis between humans and vegetal material, tree-dwelling hermits, spirits metamorphosing into wood, flowers or trees that sprout from bodies or the dissolution of the self into the natural world. Complementary to these approaches are studies that suggest a collapsing of time and space in spiritually charged yet ambiguous natural motifs or topographies where forests or groves are spaces of transformative experience.

Beatrice Trînca wurde 2007 an der Universität Würzburg mit der Arbeit »Parrieren und undersnîden: Wolframs Poetik des Heterogenen« promoviert. 2017 erfolgte die Habilitation an der Universität Hamburg im Fach Ältere deutsche Sprache und Literatur.

This volume considers premodern ideas about plants and trees from multiple sources and perspectives, including botanical-medical treatises, the Book of Nature, religious and vernacular landscapes.