Apocalyptic Ecologies - From Creation to Doom in Middle English Literature

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.

About the author

Shannon Gayk is professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth Century England.

Product details

• Authors: Professor Shannon Gayk, Shannon Gayk
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.12.2024
• EAN: 9780226837611
• ISBN: 978-0-226-83761-1
• No. of pages: 304
• Subjects: Guides > Self-help, everyday life > Family; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval