Apocalyptic ecologies : from creation to doom in Middle English literature / Shannon Gayk.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gayk, Shannon Noelle, author.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English literature.

Environmental degradation in literature.

Apocalypse in literature.

Ecology in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (293 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

From creation to doom in Middle English literature

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2024]

Summary:

A meditative reflection on what medieval disaster writing can teach us about how to respond to the climate emergency. When a series of ecological disasters swept medieval England, writers turned to religious storytelling for precedents. Their depictions of biblical floods, fires, storms, droughts, and plagues reveal an unsettled relationship to the natural world, at once unchanging and bafflingly unpredictable. In Apocalyptic Ecologies, Shannon Gayk traces representations of environmental calamities through medieval plays, sermons, and poetry such as Cleanness and Piers Plowman. In premodern disaster writing, she recovers a vision of environmental flourishing that could inspire new forms of ecological care today: a truly apocalyptic sensibility capable of seeing in every ending, every emergency a new beginning waiting to emerge.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Dedication

Contents

Introduction: Learning to Die

Excursus: A Brief History of Medieval Climate Change

Part I. Edenic Ecologies

1 Being Earth: Performing the “Fayre Processe” of Creation

2 “This Deadly Life”: Elegy and Ecological Care after Eden

Part II Everyday Apocalypse

Excursus: On Plague, Precedent, and the Punishment Paradigm

3 Becoming Beholden: Floods, Fires, and Acts of Attention

4 Ordinary Apocalypses: Wondrous Weather in Early England

Part III Apocalyptic Ecologies

5 Fifteen Ways of Looking: Signs at the End of the World

Epilogue: Learning to Love: Ecological Attention and the Work of Care

Acknowledgments

Notes

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226837628

0226837629

OCLC:

1472149500