If medieval literary studies is like so many fields currently conditioned by an ecological turn that dislodges the human from its central place in materialist analysis then why now focus on the law Is not the law the most human if not indeed the human institution In proposing that all life in medieval Britain whether animal or vegetable was subject to the same legal machine that enabled claims on land are we not ignoring the ecocritical demand that we counteract human exceptionalism and reframe the past with inhuman eyes ampampnbsp This volume edited by Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor presents a diverse and stimulating group of interconnected essays that respond to these questions by infusing biopolitical material and theory into ecocentric studies of medieval life. The Politics of Ecology Land Life and Law in Medieval Britain pursues the political power of sovereign law as it disciplines and manages various forms of natural life and discloses the literary biopolitics played out in texts that work out the fraught interactions of life and law in all its forms. Contributors to this volume explore such issues as legal networks and death Arthurian bare life Chaucerian medical biopolitics the biopolitics of fur ecologies of sainthood arboreal political theology conservation and political ecology and geographical melancholy. ampampnbsp Bringing together both established and rising critical voices The Politics of Ecology creates a place for cuttingedge medievalist ecocriticism focused on the intersections of land life and law in medieval English French and Latin literature. ampampnbsp