A01=Shannon Gayk
adaptation
apocalypse
attention
Author_Shannon Gayk
Bible
care
Category=DSBB
drama
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
medieval
Middle English
natural disaster
poetry
Product details
- ISBN 9780226837611
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Dec 2024
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
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.
Shannon Gayk is professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth Century England.
