Did Byzantines feel ecological grief? Mourning the natural world in Medieval Greek literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13003145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adam J Goldwyn (0000-0001-6175-8593, North Dakota State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 831-848 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | postmedieval a journal of medieval cultural studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2040-5960 • E-ISSN: 2040-5979 |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41280-025-00390-1 |
| OpenAlex | W4416352033 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
This article contributes to the affective turn in modern ecocritical discourse, which considers how environmental destruction feels to those who witness it, those who experience it, and those who cause it. Affective ecocriticism has heretofore been applied to predominantly contemporary texts, and this article challenges the presentism of ecocritism. Departing from the movement in affect theory that conceives of emotion as a social construct, this article argues that Byzantines felt grief at the destruction of the natural world, though in ways that are different from those accounted for within contemporary ecocritical discourse. Lacking the capacity to create widespread and irreversible ecological devastation and therefore also lacking the tools to measure the incremental nature of planetary change (such as sea-level and temperature rise), the Byzantines were ultimately not able to conceive of a global climate crisis or react to it emotionally. By comparing select works of several twelfth-century writers—including Nikephoros Basilakes ( Progymnasmata ), Niketas Choniates ( Historia ), and Constantine Manasses ( Description of the Crane Hunt and the Monody on the Death of his Goldfinch )—to examples of contemporary eco-elegy, this article shows that Byzantines could and did feel ecological grief at the level of the individual (that is, for the death of a particular tree or a particular bird)
Consolation · Ecocriticism · Grief · Medieval Literature · Natural (archaeology · Presentism · Witness · Byzantine Studies and History · Joseph Conrad and Literature · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics
| Highly cited | No |
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