Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-1-316-51015-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 624 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 1044 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Borlik, Todd Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Nachschlagewerke
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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.

Über Autor(innen)

Borlik, Todd Andrew
Todd Andrew Borlik is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield and the author of Ecocriticism and Early Modern English Literature (2011).