This collection of 11 interdisciplinary essays, focused upon Europe (particularly France) in the period 900–1400, is a welcome addition to current research on space. The essays are grouped thematically and cover a wide range of topics and approaches, from architecture and cartography to legal documents and communication networks. Responding to the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, the book offers a series of specialized interventions into medieval concepts and practices of space that are framed by an invaluable introduction and a wealth of further reading in the footnotes.

In the introduction, Cohen, Madeline and Dominique Iogna-Prat offer a brief but detailed account of the history of space in European scholarship and identify important current trends in research, such as the role of time in the production of space and the increasing recognition of the multiplicity of forces at work in its construction. They highlight the significance, and limitations, of Lefebvre's La production de l’espace (1974) in shaping the discourse, and the collection is divided into three sections based upon his interconnected concepts of physical space (representations of space), social space (spatial practices) and mental space (representational or symbolic space). The essays broaden out from specific places and buildings in the first section, to spatial networks, cartographic representations of real and imagined geographies and finally metaphorical space in the literary text.

The first section, ‘Places, monuments, and cities’, focuses on specific sites and will be of most interest to scholars of urban history. Emanuele Lugli's chapter examines medieval geometrical planning, arguing that the Roman practice of land division known as ‘centuriation’ was still practised in Italy in the Middle Ages, evidenced by the planning of the cathedrals of Modena and Cremona in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Lugli concludes his chapter by using Gerbert of Aurillac's Geometria as evidence for the ‘cultural relevance’ of centuriation, a practice that he concludes ‘worked as the crucible through which medieval communities approached space at large’ (p. 36). This productive conversation between specific buildings and textual representations of space is continued in Stefaan Van Liefferinge's fascinating chapter on the resonances of the rib vaulting in the choir of Notre-Dame with Hugh of St Victor's description of the sacred geometry of Noah's ark. Van Liefferinge's essay argues persuasively for the additional ‘semantic layer’ that the connection with the ark adds to the cathedral (p. 49) and this accumulation of meaning through interdisciplinary research is a major strength of the entire volume's engagement with space. The third chapter in this section by Robert Bork examines the importance of two-dimensional drawings in the construction of Gothic buildings, a ‘non-spatial approach to architectural design’ that was the source of the power of their immense spaces (p. 51). The final chapter by David Ross Winter is a case-study of Utrecht's ‘kerkenkruis’ or cross of churches in the city. Winter argues convincingly for the cross-shaped configuration of ecclesiastical structures as evidence of the medieval predisposition for seeing crosses in the landscape, both real and imagined, and his essay goes on to provide a rich account of the sacred and political significance of the ‘kerkenkruis’ for the city of Utrecht.

The second and third sections of the book, ‘Spatial networks and territories’ and ‘Cartography and imagined geographies’ respectively, move on from specific buildings to think about regions, territories and countries. Anne Lunven analyses the significance of the vocabulary of ‘plebs’ and ‘parochia’ in medieval Brittany; Thomas Wetzstein proposes a more abstract space generated by the networks of communication established by popes, scholars and monks; and most usefully for the urban historian, Ada-Maria Kuskowski shows how the French ‘coutumiers’, vernacular documents of customary law, negotiated a legal space that extended beyond the regional, a ‘juridical space that tagged place but participated in a converging discourse that sought “commonness” and unity’ (p. 154). The final section of essays concentrates in the main on the relationship between real and imagined space in medieval maps and geographical treatises with essays by Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, Jean-Charles Ducène and Nathalie Bouloux. The book concludes with Catherine Nicolas’ exploration of the space of the soul in the prose Romans du Graal, an essay of particular interest to literary critics and theologians working on space. This final essay is different in content and approach from the other three in the section but it holds its own in representing the rich possibilities of the literary analysis of space.

Although many of the essays in this collection are specialized, those that foreground the theoretical significance of their case-studies (such as Bork, Winter and Bouloux) offer stimulating perspectives on the potential of work on space to resonate beyond disciplinary boundaries. For scholars currently working on space, or indeed graduate students requiring a quick overview of the critical field, the introduction will be especially profitable and the footnotes even more so. Cohen and Madeline have produced a valuable and refreshing new collection that amply displays the range and depth of work currently undertaken on space, place, and imagined geographies in the humanities.