Shakespeare &

Ecocriticism

EWL

Andrew King

Plan of lecture

1.The Golden Age – and what it omits

2.What is “ecocriticism”?3.Why “ecocriticism”?4.How can we use “ecocriticism” to understand Shakespeare?

(example: As You Like It)

As you Like It , I.1.6-19ORLANDO: As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education… 

As you Like It , I.1.6-19ORLANDO: As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education… 

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

• Moreover by the golden age what other thing is ment,

• Than Adams tyme in Paradyse, who beeing innocent • Did lead a blist and happy lyfe untill that thurrough sin

• He fell from God ? From which tyme foorth all sorrow did begin.

• The earth accursed for his sake, did never after more

• Yeeld foode without great toyle.

SHAKESPEARE'S OVID BEING ARTHUR GOLDING'STRANSLATION OF THE METAMORPHOSES EDITED BYW. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D., De La More Press (1904), The [prefatory] Epistle lines 469-474Available at http://ia700301.us.archive.org/28/items/shakespearesovid00oviduoft/shakespearesovid00oviduoft.pdf

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, BooK 1, ll. 103-128

• Then sprang up first the golden age, which of it selfe maintainde,

• The truth and right of every thing unforst and unconstrainde.

• There was no feare of punishment, there was no threatning lawe

• In brazen tables nayled up, to keepe the folke in awe.

• There was no man would crouch or creepe to Judge with cap in hand,

• They lived safe without a Judge in every Realme and lande.

• The loftie Pynetree was not hewen from mountaines where it stood,

• In seeking straunge and forren landes to rove upon the flood. no

• Men knew none other countries yet, than were themselves did keepe :

• There was no towne enclosed yet, with walles and ditches deepe.

• No home nor trumpet was in use, no sword nor helmet worne.

• The worlde was suche, that souldiers helpe might easly be forborne.

• The fertile earth as yet was free, untoucht of spade or plough,

• And yet it yeelded of it selfe of every things inough.

• And men themselves contented well with plaine and simple foode,

• That on the earth by natures gift without their travell stoode,

• Did live by Raspis, heppes and hawes, by cornelles, plummes and cherries,

• By sloes and apples, nuttes and peares, and lothsome bramble berries,

• And by the acornes dropt on ground from Joves brode tree in fielde.

• The Springtime lasted all the yeare, and Zephyr with his milde

• And gende blast did cherish things that grew of owne accorde.

• The ground untilde, all kinde of fruits did plenteously avorde.

• No mucke nor tillage was bestowde on leane and barren land,

• To make the corne of better head and ranker for too stand.

• Then streames ran milke, then streames ran wine, and yellow honny flowde

• From ech greene tree whereon the rayes of firie Phebus glowde.

• The worlde was suche, that souldiers helpe might easly be forborne.

• The fertile earth as yet was free, untoucht of spade or plough,

• And yet it yeelded of it selfe of every things inough.

• And men themselves contented well with plaine and simple foode,

• That on the earth by natures gift without their travell stoode,

• Did live by Raspis, heppes and hawes, by cornelles, plummes and cherries,

• By sloes and apples, nuttes and peares, and lothsome bramble berries,

• And by the acornes dropt on ground from Joves brode tree in fielde.

• The Springtime lasted all the yeare, and Zephyr with his milde

• And gende blast did cherish things that grew of owne accorde.

• The ground untilde, all kinde of fruits did plenteously avorde.

• No mucke nor tillage was bestowde on leane and barren land,

• To make the corne of better head and ranker for too stand.

• Then streames ran milke, then streames ran wine, and yellow honny flowde

• From ech greene tree whereon the rayes of firie Phebus glowde.

As you Like It , I.1.6-19ORLANDO: As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education… 

John Harington, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, p. 186

To keepe your houses sweete, clense privie vaultes.

To keepe your soules as sweete, mend privie faults.

Dolly Jorgenson, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, jakes, and early modern urban sanitation, Early Modern Studies

John Harington, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, ll.186-7

when companies of men began first to increase, and make of families townes, and of townes cities; they quickly found not onely offence, but infection, to grow out of great concourse of people, if speciall care were not had to avoyd it. And because they could not remove houses, as they do tents, from place to place, they were driven to find the best meanes that their wits did then serve them, to cover, rather then to avoyd these annoyances: either by digging pits in the earth, or placing the common houses over rivers…

“It isn’t language which has a hole in its ozone layer” Kate Soper, What is Nature: Culture, Politics and the Non-Human, (Wiley, 1995), p. 151

What does ecocriticism do?

• Looks at representation of nature• Refuses the “linguistic turn”• Uses value judgements based on

– mutuality– sustainability – responsibility – claims of the Other

• Attention to the “pastoral”• Attention to specific places• Attention to “factual” writing – esp. topographical/ environmental

What does ecocriticism do?

“Perception of the world as evolutionary ecosysten in which lines of connection extend in all directions”Richard Kerridge, “Ecocriticism and the Mission of ‘English’ 11-26 in Greg Garrard, Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies (Palgrave) 2012, p. 15

What is “ecocriticism”

• Founded in US in late 1980s• Key players

– Frederick Waage •1985 Teaching Environmental Literature, (MLA)

– Cheryll Glotfelty •1992 Co-founder of ASLE•1993 Journal - Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (ISLE)•1996 Co-ed with Harold Fromm The Ecocriticism Reader

What is “ecocriticism”

• Term dates back to 1970s studies of Romantic British poets–E.g. Karl Kroeber “Home at Grasmere: ecological holiness,” PMLA 89 (1074) 132-41

–Cheryll Glotfelty revived it in 1989 to name “study of nature writing”

What is “ecocriticism”

•IN US a lot of ecocriticism on the “Transcendentalists” of the 1840s–Emerson (1803-1882)–Thoreau (1817-1862–Margaret Fuller (1820-1850)

What is “ecocriticism”

• IN UK on the Romantics – esp Wordsworth–Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology:

Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (1991)

The Song of the Earth (2000)

The set reading

• Chrispher Manes, “Nature and silence” – From The Ecocriticism Reader, ed Cheryll Glotfelty & Harold Fromm, University of Georgia Press 1996

– Basic contention?•That literate societies do not listen to nature–Argues for “deep ecology” against “humanist ecology”

– Animism is dead with regard to nature

The set reading• Deep ecology“If fungus, one of the “lowliest” of forms on a humanistic scale of values, were to go extinct tomorrow, the effect on the rest of the biosphere would be catastrophic, since the health of frests depends on the Mycorryzal fungus, and the disappearance of forests would upset the hydrology, atmosphere and temperature of the entire globe. In contrast, if Homo sapiens disapperaed, the event would go virtually unnoticed by the vast majoity of earth’s life forms” (p. 24)

The set reading

• Humanist ecology– Represented mainly by Murray Bookchin

– Based on idea that “the human subject that pervades institutional knowledge since the Renaissance already embodies a relationship with nature that precludes a speaking world” (p. 25)

– Nature must be served for the benefit of “Man”

The set reading

• Problems?–Highly selective use – and wilful misinterpretations - of sources to create a simply wrong devolutionary narrative

–Ad hominem attacks–Ignorance

The set text

• No real alternative offered“language free from an obsession with human preeminence … must leap away from the rhetoric of humanism we speak today. Perhaps it will draw on the ontological egalitarianism of native American or other primal cultures, with their attentiveness to place and local processes” (p. 25)

Is a real ecocritical alternative possible in literary studies?

•A priori statement - we are formed by and are part of a symbolic (literary) ecology

•We therefore owe that ecology a debt•While part of that ecology we are separate from it

•We are duty bound to “listen” to that ecological system and interact with it

•We therefore need to allow texts their difference from us – put them in their contexts

As you Like it (1599)

Register of Stationer’s Company4 August 1600 on preliminary leafAs yow like yt:/ a bookeHenry the ffift:/ a bookeEuery man in his Humor,/ a bookeThe cōmedie of muche A doo about nothing./ A booke

}To be staied

As you Like it (1599)1 June 1598

Decree issued to Stationers’Company by

Archbishop of Canterbury & Bishop of London

-No satires & epigrams- No new plays

“except they be allowed by such as have

authority”

To be staied

As you Like it (1599)

• Influenced by Ovid’s Metamorphoses• written shortly after new edition of Sidney’s Arcadia (1598)

• Great Dearth – enclosures and deforestations – 1594-7

•See Andrew B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England, (Stanford University Press, 1978)

• Tower Hill riot 1595

Enter ORLANDO, with his sword drawn ORLANDO      Forbear, and eat no more. JAQUES      Why, I have eat none yet. ORLANDO      Nor shalt not, till necessity be served. …DUKE SENIOR     Art thou thus bolden'd, man, by thy distress,     Or else a rude despiser of good manners,     That in civility thou seem'st so empty? …ORLANDO      I almost die for food; and let me have it. 

DUKE SENIOR     Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table. …ORLANDO     Then but forbear your food a little while,     Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn     And give it food. There is an old poor man,     Who after me hath many a weary step     Limp'd in pure love: till he be first sufficed,     Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger     I will not touch a bit. DUKE SENIOR       Go find him out,     And we will nothing waste till you return. 

As You Like it II.vii

Richard Gardiner.Profitable Intsructions for the Manuring, Sowing and

Planting of Kitchin Gardens (1599)

The poor which late were like to pineAnd could not buie them breadIn greatest time of pennurieWere by his labours fedAnd that in reasonable rate.Wghen Corn was scantWith parsnip and carret rootsHe did supply their want

Quoted in Todd A Borlik, Ecocriticism and Early Modern English Literature (Routledge, 2012), p. 185

• George Gascoigne, The Noble Art of Venerie 1575see Stephen Hamrick, “Set in Portraiture,” Early Modern Literary StudiesOriginal by Jacques de Fouilloux has a poem “Complainte du Cerf” – translated by Gascoigne adding 4 similar “complaints” by animals

• George Gascoigne, The Noble Art of Venerie 1575Preface.. poore Harte o harmless Hart…

The wofull words of the Hart to the Hunter Why dost thou then o Man! O Hunter! Me pursueWith cry of Hounds, with baslt of horne, with hallow and with hue?... Is it because thy mynde doth seek thereby some gaiynes?Canst thou in death take such delight@ breeds pleasure so in paynes? Oh cruell, be content to take in worth my teares,With growe to gumme, and fall from me…And thee preserve from Pestilence in Pomander or Ball…Such wholesome teares shedde I when thou pursuest me…