Roll over image to zoom in Click on image to zoom

Climate Change and Original Sin

Name: Climate Change and Original Sin
Brand: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS
SKU: 9780813949741
Price: 116.0 AUD
Availability: InStock

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESSISBN: 9780813949741

The Moral Ecology of John Milton's Poetry

Price:

$116.00

Stock:

Out of Stock - Available to backorder

Quantity:

By Katherine Cox
Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS
Release Date: September 14, 2023
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 272

Share this product

Button Actions

Please copy the ISBN for submitting review copy form

Prior to the Enlightenment era, how was the human-climate relationship conceived? Focusing on the most recent epoch in which belief in an animate environment still widely prevailed, Climate Change and Original Sin argues that an ecologically inflected moral system assumed that humanity bore responsibility for climate corruption and volatility. The environmental problem initiated by original sin is not only that humans alienated themselves from nature but also that satanic powers invaded the world and corrupted its elements-particularly the air. Milton shared with contemporaries the widespread view that storms and earthquakes represented the work of fearsome spiritual agents licensed to inflict misery on humans as penalty for sin. Katherine Cox's work discerns in Paradise Lost an ecological fall distinct from, yet concurrent with, the human fall. In examining Milton's evolving representations of the climate, this book also traces the gradual development of ideas about the atmosphere during the seventeenth century-a change in the intellectual climate driven by experimental activity and heralding an ecologically devastating shift in Western attitudes toward the air.

Katherine Cox is an independent scholar living in France.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. "Infant Cries": Meteorological Voices in The Nativity Ode 2. Early Acoustic Theory and the Aural Soul in Comus 3. The Power of the Air in Milton's Epic Poetry 4. "How cam'st thou speakable of mute": Satanic Acoustics in Paradise Lost 5. Milton and the Barometer: Climate Change in Pneumatic Science 6. "Throttled at length in the Air": Environmental Warfare and Climate Regained Epilogue Bibliography

"A major contribution to the critical understanding of early modern notions of climate and climate change. This is an extremely impressive work of scholarship, and one of the very best works on Milton in recent years. Thorough, creative, and compelling." - Christopher Kendrick, Loyola University Chicago, author of Milton: A Study in Ideology and Form "A highly original, well researched, and impressively informative study full of bracing surprises and rich in fresh insights into Milton's poetry, place, and times. Cox's book embodies a thoroughgoing, detailed, and ultimately convincing insistence on the importance and interconnectedness for Milton (and beyond) of climate, meteorology, pneumatology, air, airs, winds, spirits, inspirations, exhalations, voices, and music." - Dennis Danielson, University of British Columbia, author of Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy

Climate Change and Original Sin

Request Academic Copy

Description

You may also like

Recently viewed