Environment, society, and The compleat angler / Marjorie Swann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Swann, Marjorie (Marjorie E.), author.

Series:

Cultural inquiries in English literature, 1400-1700.

Cultural inquiries in English literature, 1400-1700

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683. Compleat angler.

Walton, Izaak.

Fishing in literature.

Environmentalism in literature.

Human ecology in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

University Park, PA : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

First published in 1653, The Compleat Angler is one of the most influential environmental texts ever written. Addressing a politically and religiously polarized nation devastated by warfare, disease, ecological degradation, and climate change, Izaak Walton's famous fishing treatise stages a radical thought experiment: how might humanity's enhanced relationship with the natural world generate a new kind of sustaining-and sustainable-social order beyond the traditional boundaries of the church, the state, and the biological family?Challenging the current scholarly consensus that reads Walton's how-to manual as a conservative polemic camouflaged by fishlore, Marjorie Swann examines this richly complicated portrayal of the natural world through an ecocritical lens and explores other neglected aspects of Walton's writings, including his depictions of social hierarchy, gender, and sexuality. In the process, Swann analyzes a host of noncanonical environmental texts and provides a groundbreaking reappraisal of Charles Cotton's "Part II" of The Compleat Angler. This study extends the hydrological turn in early modern ecocriticism and demonstrates how, as a genre, angling manuals provide new insights into the environmental, cultural, social, and literary history of early modern England.Taking its place alongside landmark works of ecocriticism such as Green Shakespeare and Milton and Ecology, this fresh and timely reassessment of The Compleat Angler rightly ranks Izaak Walton among the most important environmental writers of the early modern era.

Contents:

The environmental imagination of Izaak Walton

Creating the Brotherhood of the Angle

The great chain of eating

Charles Cotton and the properties of angling

Epilogue : haunted by Walton.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Jan 2024)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780271096575

0271096578

9780271096582

0271096586

OCLC:

1432601843