Marvels of the World - An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700

With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment and concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal.

List of contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1. Natural Philosophy and Natural Knowledge

Hebrew Bible, Genesis 1

Aristotle, Physics

Lucretius, De rerum natura, or On the Nature of Things

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On the Nature of the Earth

Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On the Elements

Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, or Causes and Cures

Alain de Lille, De planctu naturae, or The Complaint of Nature

Roger Bacon, Opus majus, or Greater Work

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei, or Disputed Questions on the Power of God

Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, The Book of the Secrets of Albertus Magnus

Giambattista della Porta, Magia naturalis, or Natural Magic

Guillaume du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On the Seventh Day

Hugh Platt, Floraes Paradise

Francis Bacon, Novum organum, or New Organon, and New Atlantis

Hannah Wolley, The Ladies Directory

Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, "First Dream"

Part 2. Plants

Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, or On the Causes of Plants

Aristotle, De anima, or Of the Soul

Dioscorides, De materia medica, or Herbal

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Flowers

Pseudo-Apuleius, The Old English Herbarium

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women

Pierre de Ronsard, "Ode to Cassandra"

Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium, or On the History of Plants

William Turner, A New Herbal

John Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants

Guillaume Du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On

Aconite

William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden, On the Cultivation of Trees

John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Auriculas

George Herbert, "The Flower"

Ralph Austen, A Treatise of Fruit Trees, and The Spiritual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees

Johanna St. John, Manuscript Recipes

Samuel Gilbert,Florist's Vade-Mecum, On Auriculas

Part 3. Animals

Aristotle, Historia animalium, or The History of Animals

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Animals

Physiologus

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, or On the Properties of Things

Second-Family Bestiary

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls

Marie de France, Fables

John Lydgate, "The Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep"

Anselm Turmeda, The Disputation of the Donkey

Michel de Montaigne, "An Apology for Raymond Sebond"

John Caius, Of English Dogges

Thomas Johnson, Cornucopiae

Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts

Gervase Markham, Markham's Masterpiece

Hester Pulter, "The Ugly Spider"

Richard Lovelace, "The Snail"

Margaret Cavendish, Grounds of Natural Philosophy

Robert Hooke, Micrographia

Part 4. Weather, Climate, and Seasons

Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places

Aristotle, Meteorologica, or Meteorology

Virgil, Georgics, Book 1, On the Storm

Pseudo-Aristotle, Secreta secretorum, or The Secret of Secrets

Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On Climate

Wandalbert of Prüm, On the Names, Signs, Times of Planting, and Qualities of Weather of the Twelve

Months

William Ram, Rams Little Dodoen

Thomas Tusser, An Hundredth Points of Good Husbandrie

William Shakespeare, King Lear

Amelia Lanyer, "The Description of Cookham"

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Thomas Jackson, The Raging Tempest Stilled

Thomas Sprat and Robert Hooke, History of the Royal Society, On Weather

Samuel Gilbert, Florist's Vade-Mecum, Instructions for July

Part 5. Inhabiting the Land

Theocritus, Idyll 7

Virgil, Eclogue 1

Virgil, Georgics, On Farming

Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Farming

Walter of Henley, Dite de hosbondrie, or Boke of Husbandry

William Langland, Piers Plowman

Second Shepherd's Play, from the Wakefield Mystery Plays

Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia

Thomas More, Utopia

Thomas Tusser, Five Hundredth Points of Good Husbandrie

William Harrison, Description of England

Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde's Calendar

Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman, On Farming

Ben Jonson, "To Penshurst"

Mary Wroth, Urania

Robert Herrick, "The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home"

Walter Blith, The English Improver Improved

Part 6. Gardens and Gardening

Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Gardens

Pietro de' Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum, or Book of Rural Commodity

Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, or The Romance of the Rose

Nicolas Bollard, On Planting and Grafting

Thomas Hill, The Gardener's Labyrinth

Robert Laneham, Description of the Garden at Kenilworth

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman, On Grafting

William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden and The Countrie Housewife's Garden, On Domestic

Gardening

John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Nature and Gardening

Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, Description of Her Garden

René Rapin, Hortorum Libri IV, or Of Gardens

Andrew Marvell, "The Mower Against Gardens"

Hester Pulter, "The Snail, the Tulip, and the Bee"

John Evelyn, Elysium Britannicum, or The Royal Gardens

John Worlidge, Systema Horticulturae, or The Art of Gardening in Three Books

Part 7. Outlandish Natural Worlds

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Fortunate Isles

John Mandeville, Travels

Leo Africanus, Della descrittione dell'Africa, or Description of Africa

Jean de Léry, Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre de Brésil, or History of a Voyage to the Land of

Brazil

Thomas Harriot, Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia

Walter Raleigh, Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana

Michael Drayton, "Ode: To the Virginian Voyage"

John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum

Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, Observations on Java

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: A True History

Recommended Reading and Bibliography

Permissions to Reprint

Index

About the author

Rebecca Bushnell is the School of Arts and Sciences Board of Overseers Emerita Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens among other books.

Summary

With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment and concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal.

Product details

• Authors: Rebecca Bushnell
• Assisted by: Rebecca Bushnell (Editor)
• Publisher: University of pennsylvania pr
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2021
• EAN: 9780812224733
• ISBN: 978-0-8122-2473-3
• No. of pages: 384
• Series: Penn Studies in Landscape Arch; Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies