Kellie Robertson is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"Nature Speaks is inspirational, since it offers new insights for the field of medieval literature, and the ambition and scope of the work are to be applauded." (Isis) "At a moment when the human relationship to the natural world is deeply in need of attention and rearticulation, Kellie Robertson has given us a book that closely studies representations of the 'naturalness' of human beings in late medieval French and English literature. Robertson seeks to restore to view a pre-modern version of the human as internal to the natural world, a concept that creates a terrain for wideranging debate about the desires, compulsions, limits, and freedoms of human beings." (Review of English Studies) "Kellie Robertson's book is an indispensable study of the idea of nature in the writings of Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Lydgate. Revising the foundational work on nature and Platonism undertaken several generations ago, it offers an entirely new way of understanding the significance of nature in vernacular writing." (D. Vance Smith, Princeton University)

• A Note on Citations and AbbreviationsIntroduction: Medieval Poetry and Natural PhilosophyPART I. FRAMING MEDIEVAL NATUREChapter 1. Figuring PhysisChapter 2. Aristotle's Nature and Its DiscontentsPART II. ALLEGORIZING NATURE IN THE VERNACULARChapter 3. Jean de Meun and the Rule of NecessityChapter 4. Allegory Without Nature: Guillaume de Deguileville's PÈlerinage de vie humainePART III. LOVE AND TH ELIMITS OF NATURAL REASONChapter 5. Chaucer's NaturesChapter 6. "Kyndely Reson" on Trial: Translating Nature After ChaucerEpilogue: Nature's Silence: Humanism, Posthumanism, and the Legacy of Medieval NatureNotesWorks CitedIndexAcknowledgments

Kellie Robertson is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"Nature Speaks is inspirational, since it offers new insights for the field of medieval literature, and the ambition and scope of the work are to be applauded." (Isis) "At a moment when the human relationship to the natural world is deeply in need of attention and rearticulation, Kellie Robertson has given us a book that closely studies representations of the 'naturalness' of human beings in late medieval French and English literature. Robertson seeks to restore to view a pre-modern version of the human as internal to the natural world, a concept that creates a terrain for wideranging debate about the desires, compulsions, limits, and freedoms of human beings." (Review of English Studies) "Kellie Robertson's book is an indispensable study of the idea of nature in the writings of Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Lydgate. Revising the foundational work on nature and Platonism undertaken several generations ago, it offers an entirely new way of understanding the significance of nature in vernacular writing." (D. Vance Smith, Princeton University)

• A Note on Citations and AbbreviationsIntroduction: Medieval Poetry and Natural PhilosophyPART I. FRAMING MEDIEVAL NATUREChapter 1. Figuring PhysisChapter 2. Aristotle's Nature and Its DiscontentsPART II. ALLEGORIZING NATURE IN THE VERNACULARChapter 3. Jean de Meun and the Rule of NecessityChapter 4. Allegory Without Nature: Guillaume de Deguileville's PÈlerinage de vie humainePART III. LOVE AND TH ELIMITS OF NATURAL REASONChapter 5. Chaucer's NaturesChapter 6. "Kyndely Reson" on Trial: Translating Nature After ChaucerEpilogue: Nature's Silence: Humanism, Posthumanism, and the Legacy of Medieval NatureNotesWorks CitedIndexAcknowledgments