Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination

Description

Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions. This book accepts the natural world as such by investigating how Anglo-Saxons interacted with and conceived of their lived environments. Examining Old English poems, such as "Beowulf" and "Judith", as well as descriptions of natural events from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other documentary texts, Heide Estes shows that Anglo-Saxon ideologies which view nature as diametrically opposed to humans, and the natural world as designed for human use, have become deeply embedded in our cultural heritage, language, and more. Acknowledgments 7 Dedication 7 1. Introduction 9 Anglo-Saxon Landscapes: Archaeological and Historical Evidence 10 Defining Ecocritical Terms 17 Environmental Criticisms and Ecological Theories 19 Ecocriticism and Anglo-Saxon Studies 27 Anglo-Saxon Texts and Ecocriticisms 31 2. Imagining the Sea in Secular and Religious Poetry 35 Introduction 35 Sea Crossings: "Elene", "Andreas", "Exodus" 36 Beowulf and the Sea-Creatures 43 Marsh in "Beowulf" 45 Ecofeminism and the Other 49 Menstrual Blood and Amniotic Flood: "Andreas" 54 Conclusion 58 3. Ruined Landscapes 61 Introduction 61 Roman Past and Mutable Present 63 Imagined Biblical Origins 67 Constructed Danish Memories 75 Conclusion 85 4. Rewriting Guthlac’s Wilderness 89 Introduction 89 Postcolonial Ecocriticism 90 Guthlac as Warrior 94 Guthlac as Hermit 98 Britons as/and Demons 107 "Guthlac A" and the 'beorg' 111 Conclusion 115 5. Animal Natures 119 Introduction 119 Eating Animals As Cultural Norm 121 Animals, Humans, and Reason 123 Animal Aesthetics and Agency 131 Conclusion 140 6. Objects and Hyperobjects 145 Introduction 145 Decentering the Human 146 Gender and Ethnicity as Hyperobjects 160 Conclusion 172 7. Conclusion: Ecologies of the Past and the Future 177 Ecocriticisms in Dialogue 178 Some Proposals for Future Research 182 After the Anglo-Saxons 186 Ecocritical Ethics and Activist Scholarship 190 Works Cited 193 Index 205