The experience of disaster in early modern English literature / edited by Sophie Chiari.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Chiari, Sophie, editor.

Series:

Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nature in literature.

Natural disasters in literature.

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

English literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (199 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Routledge, [2022]

Summary:

"This collection of essays addresses the concept of 'disaster' through a variety of literary texts dating back to the early modern period. While Shakespeare's age, which was an era of colonization, certainly marked a turning point in men and women's relations with nature, the present times seem to announce the advent of environmental justice in spite of the massive ecological destructions that have contributed to reshape our planet. Between then and now, a whole history of climatic disasters and of their artistic depictions needs to be traced. The literary representations of eco-catastrophes, in particular, have consistently fashioned the English identity and led to the progress of science and the 'advancement of learning'. They have also obliged us to adapt, recycle and innovate. How could the destructive process entailed by ecological disasters be represented on the page and thereby transformed into a creative process encouraging meditation, preservation and resilience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? To this question, the proposed volume offers nuanced, contextualised and perceptive answers. Divided into three main sections 'Extreme Conditions', 'Tempestuous Skies', and 'Biblical Calamities,' this book addresses the major environmental issues of our time through the prism of early modern culture and literature"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

General Introduction

I.1 Nature Gone Wild: Disasters or Catastrophes?

I.2 Extreme Environmental Conditions

I.3 Changing Skies

I.4 The Acts of God

Notes

Part I: Extreme Conditions

Chapter 1: Shakespeare, Natural Disaster and Atmospheric Phenomena

1.1 Little Ice Age (c. 1300-1850)

1.2 Extreme Weather in A Midsummer Night's Dream

1.3 Extreme Weather in The Tempest

1.4 Questions of Survival

1.5 Conclusion: Unusual Atmospheric Phenomena

Chapter 2: Frozen: English Journeys to the End of the World

2.1 Arctic Ice, Home and Away

2.2 'Wondrous Strange Snow': A Spectacle of Strangeness 14

2.3 Eco-Catastrophe in the Frozen Zone

2.4 Conclusion: A Critical Zone

Chapter 3: Musical Representations of Natural Phenomena in Early Modern English Madrigals

3.1 Weelkes's 'Period of Cosmography'

3.2 Farnaby's Vulcan and Gibbons's Blazing Star

3.3 Wilbyes's 'Hot Climates'

3.4 Volcanoes and Masques

3.5 Conclusion: Natural Disasters Vs. Harmony and the Joys of Spring

Part II: Tempestuous Skies

Chapter 4: Man in Stormy Weathers: Tempestuous Skies in the Age of Shakespeare

4.1 Lear in the Storm

4.2 Shipwrecks in Strong Winds and Choppy Seas

4.3 Thunder and Lightning: A Sophistic Atheist's Explanation 9

4.4 Magic Weather-Making: A Political Background?

4.5 Conclusion: Changing Perspectives

Chapter 5: The Storms of Othello in 1613

5.1 Source and Performances

5.2 Weather in 1613

5.3 Entertainments, Turks and Lepanto

5.4 Spanish Armada

5.5 Storms in Othello

5.6 Conclusion: Eye of the Storm

Chapter 6: Francis Bacon and the Mastery of the Winds.

6.1 Controlling the Winds - Civil Greatness, Commerce and Trade

6.2 Histories of the Winds - Origins, Causes and Effects

6.3 Of Windmills and Sailing-Boats

6.4 Conclusion: The Most Useful History of the Weather

Part III: Biblical Calamities

Chapter 7: The Plague of Gnats in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

7.1 Contemptible Multitudes

7.2 Invisible Domestic Gnats

7.3 The Threat of Pestilence

7.4 Conspicuous Foreign Gnats

7.5 An Emerging Object of Study

7.6 Conclusion: The Destruction of Mosquitoes, an Ecological Issue

Chapter 8: Michael Drayton and the Invention of the Disaster Epic: Eco-catastrophe in the Late Poems

8.1 The Virtues and Vices of Apocalypticism

8.2 Joseph Mede and Apocalypticism in Drayton's 1627 Poems

8.3 Drayton's 'Tenth Nymphal' and England's Treeless Future

8.4 Drayton's Refutation of Flood Sceptics in 'Noahs Floud'

8.5 The Plagues of Egypt as Environmental Disasters

8.6 Conclusion: Drayton and the Origins of Disaster Epic

8.7 Coda. Biblical Disaster Epics on Screen and the Postsecular Turn

Chapter 9: John Ray's Inquiry into the Future Dissolution of the World in Miscellaneous Discourses

9.1 John Ray's Natural Theology

9.2 The Conceptual Framework of Ray's Representation of the Dissolution of the World

9.3 Ray's 'literary' Science and the Scientific Representation of Natural Disasters

9.4 Conclusion: Celebrating the Ephemeral Beauty of Nature

Note

Coda: Climate Change and the Postsecular in Paul Schrader's First Reformed

C.1 A Reformed Impersonation

C.2 'Will God forgive us…?'

C.3 Christianity for Losers

C.4 Natural Providence

C.5 Conclusion: The Collapse of Providence

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-00-327313-0

1-003-27313-0

1-000-56989-6

1-000-56991-8

9781003273134

OCLC:

1305912642