Renaissance ecology: Environmental consciousness and crises in English literature

This dissertation is concerned with how the countryside appeared in early-modern English literature in response to a number of environmental crises. These include the extraordinary growth of London (some estimates have this city's population growing tenfold from 1500 to 1700) into its surrounding environs; urban air pollution from the burning of sulfurous coal, known by 1665 to be second only to the Plague as the leading cause of death in London; the largely forgotten environmental protests of the first half of the seventeenth century, which surprisingly played a contributing role in bringing about England's Civil War; and the colonial project in Ireland, which, as imagined by poet Edmund Spenser and others, was not motivated by a desire to exploit a people, but rather a place.; While these crises caused the countryside to make an appearance in Renaissance literature, they first caused that landscape itself to emerge into appearance for England's citizens and artists. In response to dramatic environmental changes, such as those occurring in and around London, attention was drawn to the countryside in such a remarkable way that in many respects it emerged into thematic awareness for the first time as the early-modern English developed an environmental consciousness. Moreover, because writers in England were aware of this phenomenon, it played a surprising role in influencing the nature writing of the period. Drawing on modern and postmodern aesthetic theories, this dissertation argues that Renaissance nature-writing often does not significantly employ mimesis in its workings; rather, like certain works of architecture (such as early-modern London) that make no attempt at presenting an image or portrait of the surrounding environment, these texts do their work as art by directing attention away from themselves to the natural world. Although largely ignored by literary critics, from Virgil's first Eclogue through the Renaissance this understanding played an extraordinary role in shaping nature writing, especially that written in the pastoral mode.