Module description
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw attempts to ‘improve’, ‘manage’, ‘extract’, ‘catalogue’, and ‘survey’ the natural world. This included premodern ecological practices to manage air, waterways, woods, soils, and cities. It was an era of protest, riot, rebellion, petition, and complaint. This module traces practical, literary, dramatic, and non-literary human intervention in these environments. Early modern men and women had to contend with a volatile climate, the ‘little ice age’, flooding, plague, pollution, resource scarcity, deforestation, and over-population. How did these changes affect representation of the environment and its uses? By placing canonical writers such as Shakespeare in dialogue with other voices (little known, unknown, or anonymous writers) the module disrupts comfortable narratives about the relationship between humans and their environment. This module opens up the relevance of pre-modern ecological thought to contemporary challenges whilst asking if understandings of the ‘environment’, ‘crisis’, and the ‘non-human’ are in fact historically specific.
Assessment details
Essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to:
- Study how early modern literary, dramatic, and non-literary texts responded to ‘airs, waters, places’ and perceived changes in the material environment.
- Consider how writing about the natural world raised interesting challenges for literary composition
- Consider the active role early modern texts played in developing the relationship between humans and their environment as well as how the environment itself was comprehended
- Place early modern literary responses to the natural world within a wider set of debates concerning the environment and crisis in the period and to ensure that the debate includes the widest set of voices and views by offsetting canonical authors with lesser known or unknown writers
- Open up the relevance of pre-modern ecological thought to contemporary challenges whilst asking if understandings of the ‘environment’, ‘crisis’, and the ‘non-human’ are in fact historically specific.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to demonstrate their ability to:
- Think critically about concepts such as the ‘environment’, ‘crisis’ and the ‘non-human’ drawing upon a range of theoretical models, modern, and early modern
- Understand and discuss key concepts in ecocriticism, literary geography, and the environmental humanities
- Rethink our contemporary understanding of the ‘environment’, ‘crisis’, and the ‘non-human’ in the light of early modern texts and practices, showing awareness of the ways these constructs – and critique of them – are historically specific
- Analyse texts in a way that attends to the connection between pre-modern and modern ecological thought and literary composition
- Reflect on the relevance of pre-modern ecological thought to contemporary challenges
Teaching pattern
1 x 2-hour seminar, weekly