Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity

Edited by Christopher Schliephake - Foreword by Brooke Holmes - Afterword by Serenella Iovino - Contributions by Anna Banks; Roman Bartosch; Hannes Bergthaller; Christopher Chinn; Katharina Donn; Terry Gifford; Laurence Grove; J. Donald Hughes; Richard Hutchins; Marguerite Johnson; Lars Keßler; Aneta Klisczc; Joanna Komorowska; Lucy Mercer; Konrad Ott; Vittoria Prencipe; Kate Rigby; Laura Sayre; Thomas Sharkie; Justine Walter and Jingcheng Xu

Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolitical development that has led to the current environmental crisis, many ecocritical projects have avoided historicizing their concepts or have been characterized by approaches that were either pre-historic or post-historic: while the environmental movement has harbored the dream of restoring nature to a state untouched by human hands, there is also the pessimistic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, exhausted by humanity’s consumption of natural resources. Against this background, the decline of nature has become a narrative template quite common among the public environmental discourse and environmental scientists alike. The volume revisits Antiquity as an epoch which witnessed similar environmental problems and came up with its own interpretations and solutions in dealing with them. This decidedly historical perspective is not only supposed to fill in a blank in ecocritical discourse, but also to question, problematize, and inform our contemporary debates with a completely different take on “nature” and humanity’s place in the world. Thereby, a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition is established that highlights similarities as well as differences. This volume is the first book to bring ecocriticism and the classical tradition into a comprehensive dialogue. It assembles recognized experts in the field and advanced scholars as well as young and aspiring ecocritics. In order to ensure a dialogic exchange between the contributions, the volume includes four response essays by established ecocritics which embed the sections within a larger theoretical and practical ecocritical framework and discuss the potential of including the pre-modern world into our environmental debates.

Lexington Books

Pages: 390 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3284-6 • Hardback • December 2016 • $154.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-4985-3286-0 • Paperback • September 2018 • $53.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-4985-3285-3 • eBook • December 2016 • $51.00 • (£39.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: History / Ancient / General, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory, Social Science / Culture

Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolitical development that has led to the current environmental crisis, many ecocritical projects have avoided historicizing their concepts or have been characterized by approaches that were either pre-historic or post-historic: while the environmental movement has harbored the dream of restoring nature to a state untouched by human hands, there is also the pessimistic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, exhausted by humanity’s consumption of natural resources. Against this background, the decline of nature has become a narrative template quite common among the public environmental discourse and environmental scientists alike. The volume revisits Antiquity as an epoch which witnessed similar environmental problems and came up with its own interpretations and solutions in dealing with them. This decidedly historical perspective is not only supposed to fill in a blank in ecocritical discourse, but also to question, problematize, and inform our contemporary debates with a completely different take on “nature” and humanity’s place in the world. Thereby, a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition is established that highlights similarities as well as differences. This volume is the first book to bring ecocriticism and the classical tradition into a comprehensive dialogue. It assembles recognized experts in the field and advanced scholars as well as young and aspiring ecocritics. In order to ensure a dialogic exchange between the contributions, the volume includes four response essays by established ecocritics which embed the sections within a larger theoretical and practical ecocritical framework and discuss the potential of including the pre-modern world into our environmental debates.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 390 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3284-6 • Hardback • December 2016 • $154.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-4985-3286-0 • Paperback • September 2018 • $53.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-4985-3285-3 • eBook • December 2016 • $51.00 • (£39.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: History / Ancient / General, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory, Social Science / Culture

Author

Christopher Schliephake is a cultural historian, ecocritic, and postdoc scholar at the University of Augsburg.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Before Nature?, Brooke Holmes
Abbreviations
Introduction, Christopher Schliephake

Part I: Environmental (Hi)stories: Negotiating Human-Nature Interactions
(1) Environmental Mosaics Natural and Imposed, J. Donald Hughes
(2) Poseidon’s Wrath and the End of Helike: Notions about the Anthropogenic Character of Disasters in Antiquity, Justine Walter
(3) Glades of Dread: The Ecology and Aesthetics of loca horrida, Aneta Kliszcz and Joanna Komorowska
(4) Response: Hailed by the Genius of Ruins – Antiquity, the Anthropocene, and the Environmental Humanities, Hannes Bergthaller

Part II: Close Readings: Literary Ecologies and the More-than-Human World
(5) Eroticized Environments: Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy and the Roots of Erotic Ecocritical Contemplation, Thomas Sharkie and Marguerite Johnson
(6) Interspecies Ethics and Collaborative Survival in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Richard Hutchins
(7) The Ecological Highway: Environmental Ekphrasis in Statius, Silvae 4.3, Christopher Chinn
(8) Impervious Nature as a Path to Virtue: Cato in the Ninth Book of Bellum Civile, Vittoria Prencipe
(9) Response: Re-Thinking Borderlines Ecologies – A Literary Ethics of Exposure, Katharina Donn
Part III: ‘Green’ Genres: The Pastoral and Georgic Tradition
(10) The Environmental Humanities and the Pastoral Tradition, Terry Gifford
(11) “How / to make fields fertile”: Ecocritical Lessons from the History of Virgil’s Georgics in Translation, Laura Sayre
(12) Nec provident futuro tempori, sed quasi plane in diem vivant – Sustainable Business in Columella’s De Re Rustica?, Lars Keßler and Konrad Ott
(13) Response: Back to the Future – Rethinking Time in Precarious Times, Roman Bartosch

Part IV: Classical Reception: Presence, Absence, and the Afterlives of Ancient Culture
(14) The Myth of Rhiannon: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Anna Banks
(15) Emblems and Antiquity: An Exploration of Speculative Emblematics, Lucy Mercer and Laurence Grove
(16) The Sustainability of Texts: Transcultural Ecology and Classical Reception, Christopher Schliephake
(17) Daoist Spiritual Ecology in the “Anthropocene”, Jingcheng Xu
(18) Response: From Ecocritical Reception of the Ancients to the Future of the Environmental Humanities (with a detour via Romanticism), Kate Rigby

Afterword: Revealing Roots – Ecocriticism and the Cultures of Antiquity, Serenella Iovino

Reviews

Too many writers assume that ecocriticism and environmental engagement began with the poems of Wordsworth or the writings of Thoreau. This collection of essays well demonstrates that for as long as humans have been creating texts they have been meditating critically upon their place within a natural world that far exceeds them in scale and duration. Of as much interest to those working in the environmental humanities as classists, Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity demonstrates that the Greek and Latin texts of antiquity have much of importance to say to a critical conversation today.
— Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University

This is the first volume that systematically addresses the contribution of cultures of antiquity to ecological thought. Written by international experts in the field, the essays cover a broad spectrum of areas ranging from environmental histories to close textual readings, from literary poetics to natural philosophy, from ecophobic to ecoerotic discourses, from green genres to the reception of classical sources in modern ecological contexts. This substantive volume impressively demonstrates the continued significance of cultures of antiquity as a deep-time dimension of contemporary ecological thought, testifying to the sustainability of texts across the boundaries of cultures and historical periods.
— Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg

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