Delightful, oft-reprinted guide to the foliate heads so common in
medieval sculpture. This was the first-ever monograph dedicated to the
Green Man.
The Green Man, the image of the foliate head or the head of a man
sprouting leaves, is probably the most common of all motifs in medieval
sculpture. Nevertheless, the significance of the image lay largely
unregarded until KathleenBasford published this book - the first
monograph of the Green Man in any language -and thereby earned the
lasting gratitude of scholars in many fields, from art history and
folklore to current environmental studies. This book has opened up new
avenues of research, not only into medieval man's understanding of
nature, and into conceptions of death, rebirth and resurrection in the
middle ages, but also into our concern today with ecology and our
relationship with the green world. It is therefore a work of living
scholarship and its publication in paperback will be greatly and justly
welcomed.