Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England

A groundbreaking examination of ecological thought in medieval England.

While the scale of today's crisis is unprecedented, environmental catastrophe is nothing new. Waste and the Wasters studies the late Middle Ages, when a convergence of land contraction, soil depletion, climate change, pollution, and plague subsumed Western Europe. In a culture lacking formal scientific methods, the task of explaining and coming to grips with what was happening fell to medieval poets. The poems they wrote used the terms "waste" or "wasters" to anchor trenchant critiques of people's unsustainable relationships with the world around them and with each other. In this book, Eleanor Johnson shows how poetry helped medieval people understand and navigate the ecosystemic crises-both material and spiritual-of their time.

Author: Eleanor Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 11/27/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.52d
ISBN13: 9780226830179
ISBN10: 0226830179
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Literary Criticism | Medieval

About the Author
Eleanor Johnson is associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. She is the author of several books including, Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama, also published by the University of Chicago Press.