Bertram War and Ecology in the Early Modern Period

War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-351-78093-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 294 Seiten

Reihe: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture

War and Ecology in the Early Modern World argues that early modern war frequently unsettled humancenteredness, but it ultimately strengthened humans’ sense of autonomy and singularity. The early modern period is hardly unique in this way: while we carelessly invoke words like "inhuman" to characterize the horrors of war, we neglect to examine the way war interpellates us as human. Although it destabilizes the categories we use to separate the human from the nonhuman, it also shapes the physical environment for human and nonhuman species, giving humans the illusion of physical and intellectual separation. Critiques of humanism and/or anthropocentrism tend to focus on philosophical, scientific, or theological ideas— the animal rationale, the domination of nature, or Christian hierarchies. The sense of human superiority that Bertram explores here, on the other hand, rarely appears in an explicit fashion as an ideology or philosophy. It is not found in Descartes or Christian theology, yet it is quite possible that those forms of humancenteredness are in fact indebted to the sense of human superiority examined, namely, that the experience of action during perpetual war makes us regard ourselves, sometimes consciously—and sometimes not— as human. Our conscious ideas about the human/animal distinction are less important than our actions and practices. War—like zoos, laboratory experiments, or factory farming—interpellates us as human.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bertram, Benjamin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Introduction: De-humanizing War

Chapter 1: Erasmus and the Dung Beetle; or, Human Exceptionalism and its Discontents

Chapter 2: Machiavelli, the Vita Activa, and the Ecology of the Military Camp

Chapter 3: Iron Men: Thomas Digges and the Elizabethan Cyborg

Chapter 4: War and Resilience: Tamburlaine the Great and the Anglo-Spanish War

Chapter 5: Shakespeare, War, and Bestial Oblivion: Hamlet and Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2

Chapter 6: Thomas Coryate, The Lousy Humanist

Chapter 7: Francis Bacon’s Biopolitical Garden

Über Autor(innen)

Benjamin Bertram is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine