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.
Author(s): Heide Estes
Series: Environmental Humanities in Pre‑modern Cultures
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 208
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
