Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance: An Ecocritical Anthology (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781316510155)

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.

Author: Todd Andrew Borlik
ISBN-10: 1316510158
ISBN-13: 9781316510155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/20/2019
Pages: 622
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.20lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.31d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2020