Ecocritical Shakespeare / edited by Lynne Bruckner and Daniel Brayton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bruckner, Lynne Dickson.

Contributor:

Brayton, Daniel.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Literary and scientific cultures of early modernity

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Knowledge and learning--Natural history.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Natural history.

Ecocriticism.

Nature in literature.

Human ecology in literature.

Genre:

Aufsatzsammlung.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 280 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate Pub., [2011]

Summary:

Bruckner (English, Chatham U.) and Brayton (English and American literatures, Middlebury College) present a collection of 13 papers that they characterize as offering "an ecocritical reading of Shakespeare and a Shakespearean redefinition of ecocriticism," by which they appear to mean that readings of Shakespeare are deployed in part to question the assumptions of the field of ecocriticism itself (with the presentist/historicist debate looming large), if not particularly in any uniform direction. Topics include the role played by animals in the discursive and material formation of the early modern social body as reflected in the thematic significance of animals in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, the significant of waste and excrement in Antony and Cleopatra, The Taming of the Shrew and human-animal relations in the light of early modern cultural and agricultural practices, and narrative responses to dangerous weather in As You Like It and King Lear as instructive for current debates over climate change. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Introduction: warbling invaders / Dan Brayton and Lynne Bruckner

Contexts for reading

Vermin and parasites: Shakespeare's animal architectures / Karen Raber

Ecology of self in Midsummer night's dream / Robert N. Watson

Gaia and the great chain of being / Gabriel Egan

Is it Shakespearean ecocriticism if it isn't Presentist? / Sharon O'Dair

Flora, fauna, weather, water

"The Nobleness of life": Spontaneous generation and excremental life in Anthony and Cleopatra / Edward J. Geisweidt

The well-hung shrew / J. A. Shea and Paul Yachnin

Felling Falstaff in Windsor Park / Vin Nardizzi

It's all about the gillyvors: engendering art and nature in The Winter's Tale / Jennifer Munroe

Tongues in the Storm: Shakespeare, ecological crisis, and the resources of genre / Steve Mentz

Shakespeare and the global ocean / Dan Brayton

Presentism and pedagogy

An ecocritic's Macbeth / Richard Kerridge

Ophelia's plants and the death of violets / Rebecca Laroche

Teaching Shakespeare in the ecotone / Lynne Bruckner

Afterword: Ecocriticism on the lip of a lion / Simon C. Estok.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780754669197

075466919X

9781409433224

1409433226

OCLC:

693684142