Nature and the new science in England, 1665-1726 / Denys Van Renen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Van Renen, Denys, author.

Series:

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 2018:08.

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment, 0435-2866 ; 2018:08

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Ecology in literature.

Nature in literature.

Landscapes in literature.

Travel in literature.

National characteristics in literature.

English literature--Early modern.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xi, 254 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

[Liverpool] : Liverpool University Press, [2018]

Summary:

"When scholars of cultural studies consider representations of the land by British writers, the Romantic poets continue to dominate the enquiry, as though the period right before the intensification of the Industrial Revolution offers readers one last glimpse of untarnished nature. Denys Van Renen instead examines the British authors writing in the decades following the Restoration of Charles II, writers whose literary works re-animate and re-embody the land as a site of dynamic interactions, and, through this, reveal how various cultural systems and ecologies shape notions of self and national identity. Van Renen presents a rich and varied cultural history of ecological exchange--a history that begins in the 1660s, with Milton and Marvell's rejection of established Renaissance constructs, and ends with Defoe's Farther Adventures, in which the noise of the persistent howls of animals pierces human representational systems, arguing that British literature from 1665-1726 represents a cognitive symbiosis between human and non-human. As humans attempt to reduce the adverse effect of the Anthropocene, the author ultimately proposes that the aesthetics of British writers from the Restoration and early eighteenth century might be mobilized in order to rebind humans to their environs." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

1. 'Think there': nature and cognition in Restoration England

2. Royalism, the new science and Native representational systems in America

3. Fantasies of 'natural' imperialism in the Far East

4. Artifice and adaptability on the borders of 'Europe'

5. Reconfiguring the borders of the human

Coda: Scottish Enlightenment and the invention of nature

Bibliography.

Notes:

Place of publication taken from publisher's website.

"Published by Liverpool University Press on behalf of ... Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-249) and index.

ISBN:

9781786941374

1786941376

OCLC:

1031919026