ENGL 6240

Oecology: Bodies and Environments before the Modern

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

This course explores the deep prehistory of the “global weirding” that some environmental critics have attributed to the present moment – looking at the strange and often unexpected versions of living together offered by early modern English literature, and captured in the idea of the oikos, in its Greek sense of “dwelling”, and its modern successors (like “ecology.”) We will discuss how various literary forms (including drama, poetry, and a range of prose genres) imagine the interactions between human, animal, plant and other bodies and their environments - - interactions marked by dependency, influence, contagion, harm, and (sometimes) pleasure. Units on environmental genres (including georgic and pastoral), embodiment and medicine (especially in the Hippocratic tradition of airs, waters, and places), weather, disaster, and contagion.

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