Invisible Worlds

An Open Access edition will be available on the Liverpool University Press website on publication, thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Invisible Worlds explores the legends of Alderley Edge, in NE Cheshire, in fiction, community response, and creative and digital remediations. The culmination of a major 5-year research project, this co-authored study brings together literary criticism, creative practice, and public and digital medievalism to present new trans-disciplinary approaches to the study of place, taking as a case study the entangled legends and environmental and human histories of this remarkable site. A red sandstone escarpment above a network of mines, Alderley Edge is home to the medievalist legend of the sleeping knights, who rest beneath the hill and will awaken at a time of crisis. This powerful piece of folklore has inspired a rich tapestry of legendary imaginings – literary, public, and personal – associated with Alderley Edge. The volume traces the historical and contemporary life of these legends, from medieval romance to Alan Garner, asking how emplaced, and palimpsestic, medievalism of this type might form the basis of a creative and scholarly public-facing intervention communicating the value of non-built heritage and even issuing a call for environmental conservation.