Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance

Featuring over two hundred nature-themed texts spanning the disciplines of literature science and history this sourcebook offers an accessible field guide to the environment of Renaissance England revealing a nation at a crossroads between its pastoral heritage and industrialized future. Carefully selected primary sources each modernized and prefaced with an introduction survey an encyclopaedic array of topographies species and topics: from astrology to zoology bear-baiting to bee-keeping coal-mining to tree-planting fen-draining to sheep-whispering. The familiar voices of Spenser Shakespeare Jonson and Marvell mingle with a diverse chorus of farmers herbalists shepherds hunters foresters philosophers sailors sky-watchers and duchesses - as well as ventriloquized beasts trees and rivers. Lavishly illustrated the anthology is supported by a lucid introduction that outlines and intervenes in key debates in Renaissance ecocriticism a reflective essay on ecocritical editing a bibliography of further reading and a timeline of environmental history and legislation drawing on extensive archival research.