Description
Book SynopsisOld English Ecotheology examines the impact of environmental crises on early medieval English theology and poetry. Like their modern counterparts, theologians at the turn of the first millennium understood the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and affirmed the independent subjectivity of other-than-humans. The author argues for the existence of a specific Old English ecotheology, and demonstrates the influence of that theology on contemporaneous poetry. Taking the Exeter Book as a microcosm of the poetic corpus, she explores the impact of early medieval apocalypticism and environmental anxiety on Old English wisdom poems, riddles, elegies, and saints' lives.
Trade Review"Barajas’s prose embodies the generous “mutual custodianship” (179) that she has been arguing throughout this beautiful work, and the book closes with considerations of how we might move forward not only through our ownreimagined engagement with the poetic past but also how an application of this reimagining within our pedagogy may reorient our students and help manifest a better, Earth-centered future."
- Carla María Thomas,
Modern Philology, Vol. 120, No. 2
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness
Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Exeter Book
Chapter Summaries
Chapter I: Old English Ecotheology
Medieval and Modern Ecotheology
Conclusions
Chapter II: The Web of Creation in Wisdom Poems
Gnome(ish) Wisdom in Old English Poetry
“The Web of Mysteries”: Poetic Entanglement in
The Order of the World Mapping Kinship Connections in
Maxims I Conclusions
Chapter III: Identity, Affirmation, and Resistance in the Exeter Riddle Collection
Ambiguous Interpretation in the Exeter Riddle Collection
Birds’-Eye View:
Riddle 6 and
Riddle 7 Heroic Horns and Wounded Wood: Riddles of Transformation
Conclusions
Chapter IV: Trauma and Apocalypse in the Eco-Elegies
Environmental Trauma and Natural Depression in
The Wanderer Apocalypse / Now:
The Ruin Conclusions
Chapter V: Mutual Custodianship in the Landscapes of
Gu.lac A Home, Alone: Gu.lac in the Wilderness
Lessons in Early Medieval English Environmentalism
Conclusions
Coda: Old English Ecotheology
Bibliography
Index
