A rich and remarkable union of the latest in environmental theory with texts and cultures from the ancient world, which promises to advance both classics and the environmental humanities.

Will Brockliss, Bradshaw Knight Professor of the Environmental Humanities, University of Wisconsin—Madison, USA

How did ancient Greeks and Romans perceive their environments: did they see order or chaos, chance or control? And how do their views compare to modern perceptions? Conversing with Chaos in Graeco-Roman Antiquity challenges prevailing ideas that ancient perceptions of the non-human world rested on a profound belief in universal order, and that the cosmos was harmonious and under human control. Engaging with the concept of chaos in both its ancient and modern meanings, and focusing on the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, this book reveals another sense of environmental awareness, one that paid equal attention to chance and chaos, and the sometimes-fatal consequences of human interventions in nature. Bringing together a team of international scholars, the volume investigates the experience of the interaction of humans with the environment, as reflected in ancient evidence from myths and philosophical treatises, to epigraphic evidence and archaeological remains. The contributors consider the role of the human in the formation of perspectives about the natural world and explore themes of agency, affordances, ecophobia, gender and temporality. Overall, the volume reveals how, in ancient imaginations, environments were perceived as living entities with their own agency, and respondent (or even vulnerable) to human actions and decision-making. It highlights how modern insights can enrich our understanding of the past, and demonstrates the increasing relevance of ancient historical research for reflecting on current relations to the natural world.
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List of ContributorsPrefaceList of AbbreviationsIntroduction, Esther Eidinow and Christopher SchliephakeI. Control1. Perilous Environs: The Rustic World in Aratus and Nicander, Leonardo Cazzadori 2. Shared Suffering and Cyclical Destruction: Failures of Environmental Control in the Aeneid, Aaron M. Seider3. Chaos and Kosmos: An Ecocritical Reading of Seneca’s Thyestes, Simona MartoranaII. Connection4. The Interspecies and Trans-Corporeal Mesh in Euripides’ Bacchae, Maria Combatti5. The Relationality of Darkness in Thucydides, Esther Eidinow 6. The Only Constant Is Change – The Environmental Dimension of Plutarch’s De defectu oraculorum, Christopher SchliephakeIII. Contact7. Poseidon’s Mode of Action: Divine Agency and the Helike Disaster, Michiel van Veldhuizen8. River, Agency, and Gender: An Ecocritical Reading of the Myths of the Tiber, Kresimir Vukovic9. Ecological Grief and the Safaitic Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia, Eris Williams ReedIV. Change10. Ecological Grief in Aelius Aristides and Philostratus, Jason König 11. An Allegory of the ‘Anthropocene’: Environmental and textual disorder in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae, Marco Formisano12. The Environmental Ethics of Delphi: Back-filling Latour’s Facing Gaia, Mark D. Usher
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An examination of how ancient environments were socio-culturally constructed as responsive living entities that could undermine or even challenge humankind’s sense of control.
Reflects on the limits and possibilities of bringing ancient environments in closer dialogue with current approaches in the environmental humanities
The Ancient Environments series explores the worlds of living and non-living things, examining how they have shaped, and been shaped by, ancient human societies and cultures. Ranging across the Mediterranean from 3500BCE to 750CE, and grounded in case studies and relevant evidence, its volumes use interdisciplinary theories and methods to investigate ancient ecological experiences and illuminate the development and reception of environmental concepts. The series provides a deeper understanding of how and why, over time and place, people have understood and lived in their environments. Through this approach, we can reflect on our responses to contemporary ecological challenges.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781350344198
Publisert
2024-12-12
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
AldersnivĂĽ
P, 06
SprĂĽk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
232

Om bidragsyterne

Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a series editor for the Bloomsbury series Ancient Environments, co-editor of Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience (2022) and author of Envy, Poison and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (2016).

Christopher Schliephake is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Augsburg University, Germany. He is author of The Environmental Humanities and the Ancient World (2020) and editor of Ecocritisim, Ecology and Cultures in Antiquity (2017).