This is the first monograph systematically to apply modern principles of ecotheology to early medieval literature and religious texts.
Old English Ecotheology examines the impact of environmental crises on early medieval English theology and poetry. Like their modern counterparts, theologians at the turn of the first millennium understood the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and affirmed the independent subjectivity of other-than-humans. The author argues for the existence of a specific Old English ecotheology, and demonstrates the influence of that theology on contemporaneous poetry. Taking the Exeter Book as a microcosm of the poetic corpus, she explores the impact of early medieval apocalypticism and environmental anxiety on Old English wisdom poems, riddles, elegies, and saints' lives.
Introduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness,
Chapter I: Old English
Ecotheology,
Chapter II: The Web of Creation in Wisdom Poems,
Chapter III:
Identity, Affirmation, and Resistance in the Exeter Riddle Collection,
Chapter IV: Trauma and Apocalypse in the Eco-Elegies,
Chapter V: Mutual
Custodianship in the Landscapes of Guðlac A, Home, Alone: Guðlac in the
Wilderness, Coda: Old English Ecotheology, Bibliography, Index, Index of
Essential Old English Terms
Courtney Catherine Barajas is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Medieval and Modern Studies at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.
