Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance: An Ecocritical Anthology

ISBN-13: 9781316649534 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 624 str.

Todd Andrew Borlik (University of Huddersfield)

Opis

Featuring over two hundred nature-themed texts spanning the disciplines of literature, science and history, this sourcebook offers an accessible field guide to the environment of Renaissance England, revealing a nation at a crossroads between its pastoral heritage and industrialized future. Carefully selected primary sources, each modernized and prefaced with an introduction, survey an encyclopaedic array of topographies, species, and topics: from astrology to zoology, bear-baiting to bee-keeping, coal-mining to tree-planting, fen-draining to sheep-whispering. The familiar voices of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marvell mingle with a diverse chorus of farmers, herbalists, shepherds, hunters, foresters, philosophers, sailors, sky-watchers, and duchesses - as well as ventriloquized beasts, trees, and rivers. Lavishly illustrated, the anthology is supported by a lucid introduction that outlines and intervenes in key debates in Renaissance ecocriticism, a reflective essay on ecocritical editing, a bibliography of further reading, and a timeline of environmental history and legislation drawing on extensive archival research.

Recenzje

'… a timely scholarly tool that will be indispensable to any new research on nature in early modern English writing.' Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance et Réforme

Spis treści

Part I. Cosmologies: Section 1. Creation and the State of Nature; Section 2. Natural Theologies; Part II. The Tangled Chain; Section 1. Hierarchy and the Human Animal; Section 2. Beasts; Section 3. Birds; Section 4. Fish; Section 5. Insects; Section 6. Plants; Section 7. Gems, Metals, Elements, Atoms; Part III. Time and Place; Section 1. Seasons; Section 2. Country Houses; Section 3. Gardens; Section 4. Pastoral: Pastures, Meadows, Plains; Sections 5. Georgic: Fields, Farms; Section 6. Forests, Woods, Parks; Section 7. Heaths, Moors; Section 8. Mountains, Hills, Vales; Section 9. Lakes, Rivers, Oceans; Part IV. Interactions; Section 1. Animal- Baiting; Section 2. Hunting, Hawking; Section 3. Fishing; Section 4. Pet-Keeping; Section 5. Cooking, Feasting, Fasting, Healing; Part V. Environmental Problems in Early Modern England; Section 1. Population; Section 2. Enclosure; Section 3. Deforestation; Section 4. The Draining of the Fens; Section 5. Pollution; Part VI. Disaster and Resilience in the Little Ice Age; Section 1. Extreme Weather, Disorder, Dearth; Section 2. Decay; Section 3. Resilience.