Bestial oblivion : war, humanism, and ecology in Early Modern England / Benjamin Bertram.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bertram, Benjamin, 1967- author.

Contributor:

Class of 1932 Fund.

Series:

Perspectives on the non-human in literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and society.

History.

Great Britain.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

War in literature.

Humanism in literature.

Ecology in literature.

War and society--Great Britain--History.

English literature--Early modern.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 281 pages ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

War, humanism, and ecology in Early Modern England

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Routledge, 2018.

Summary:

"Although war is a heterogeneous assemblage of the human and nonhuman, it nevertheless builds the illusion of human autonomy and singularity. Focusing on war and ecology, a neglected topic in early modern ecocriticism, Bestial Oblivion: War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England shows how early modern warfare unsettled ideas of the human yet ultimately contributed to, and was then perpetuated by, anthropocentrism. Examining the connections among environmental history, war, and humanism, Bertram places particular emphasis on the Anglo-Spanish War, the Wars of Religion, the colonization of Ireland, Jacobean "peace," and the fifteenth-century rebellions that shaped national identity in Tudor England. The monograph juxtaposes a wide range of texts--essays, drama, military treatises, chronicle histories, paintings, engravings, war reports, travel narratives--and authors--Erasmus, Machiavelli, Digges, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Coryate, Bacon--in order to show how an intricate web of "perpetual war" emerged in the Elizabethan period that altered the perception of the physical environment as well as ideas of the human."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Erasmus and the dung beetle; or, human exceptionalism and its discontents

Machiavelli, virtue, and the ecology of war

Iron men: Thomas Digges, a larum for London, and the Elizabethan cyborg

War and resilience: Tamburlaine the Great and the Anglo-Spanish War

Bestial oblivion in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Thomas Coryate, the lousy humanist

Humanity under siege: francis Bacon's human empire and the Capitalocene.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1932 Fund.

ISBN:

9781138708853

1138708852

OCLC:

1035244891