Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[E]rudite and evocative . . .
Ancient Christian Ecopoetics is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's "decline and fall" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope,
Ancient Christian Ecopoetics presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research." *
Church History *
"An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity." *
Reading Religion *
"A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication." * Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
I. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGY
Prelude: Anticipations of an Eco-Chorology
Dreaming Khora: Plato's Timaeus
Interlude: Fragments of an Eco-Chorology
Khroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and Genesis
Interlude: Beginning Again with Scripture
In/Conclusion: Khora, God, Materiality
Postlude: Beginnings, Again
II. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANS
Prelude: Ecocriticism as Queer Theory
Before Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of Plotinus
Queerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt
Interlude: Desertification
Holy Disfigurations: The Life of Syncletica
Saint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the Stylite
Interlude: Performance Art
In/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer Creatures
Postlude: A Tough Love
III. Things and Practices: Arts of Coexistence
Prelude: Theorizing Things
Things: Relics and Icons in an Animate World
Things: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos
: Fragments of a Material Theology of Things
Things: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's Hexaemeron
Desiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius
: Words and Things
/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety
: The Things That Matter
Epilogue: Worm Stories
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
