Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance: An Ecocritical Anthology

Cambridge University Press, 6/20/2019
EAN 9781316510155, ISBN10: 1316510158

Hardcover, 622 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
Language: English

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.

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.