Gender and the ‘Natural’ Environment in the Middle Ages, ed. Theresa L. Tyers and Patricia Skinner. Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023, xvii, 181 pp., 11 b/w ill.

This volume, containing the fleshed-out papers presented at a conference in Swansea, TN, in January 2020, aims at building innovative bridges between female perspectives and the natural environment. However, as the title already indicates through the apostrophes, the focus is more (but not only) on gender and less on nature. The book appeared in a series dedicated to the issue of religion as a cultural phenomenon, but the articles contained here do not really address this topic. So, anyone turning to this book is faced with two puzzling problems that never find a solution. In her foreword, Laura Kalas (there is no biographical entry for her in the list of contributors) situates the basic concern of the conference within the framework of COVID-19 and probes what medieval literature might have to say about God, a universal component here flippantly referenced rather meaninglessly. However, as she highlights, nature and its perception by humans has always been in the making or becoming. Whether the following studies are really “pioneering” (xvii), remains to be seen.