{"product_id":"ancient-christian-ecopoetics-cosmologies-saints-things-hardback-9780812250794","title":"Ancient Christian Ecopoetics; Cosmologies, Saints, Things (Hardback) 9780812250794","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eAncient Christian Ecopoetics\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eCosmologies, Saints, Things\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eVirginia Burrus (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780812250794\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 23 November 2018\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e296 pages, 15 illus.\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.646 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"[E]rudite and evocative . . . \u003ci\u003eAncient Christian Ecopoetics\u003c\/i\u003e is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's \"decline and fall\" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope, \u003ci\u003eAncient Christian Ecopoetics\u003c\/i\u003e presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research.\" (\u003ci\u003eChurch History\u003c\/i\u003e) \"An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity.\" (\u003ci\u003eReading Religion\u003c\/i\u003e) \"A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication.\" (Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn our age of ecological crisis, what insights-if any-can we expect to find by looking to our past? Perhaps, suggests Virginia Burrus, early Christianity might yield usable insights. Turning aside from the familiar specter of Christianity's human-centered theology of dominion, Burrus directs our attention to aspects of ancient Christian thought and practice that remain strange and alien. Drawn to excess and transgression, in search of transformation, early Christians creatively reimagined the universe and the human, cultivating relationships with a wide range of other beings-animal, vegetable, and mineral; angelic and demonic; divine and earthly; large and small.\u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eAncient Christian Ecopoetics\u003c\/i\u003e, Burrus facilitates a provocative encounter between early Christian theology and contemporary ecological thought. In the first section, she explores how the mysterious figure of \u003ci\u003ekhora\u003c\/i\u003e, drawn from Plato's \u003ci\u003eTimaeus\u003c\/i\u003e, haunts Christian and Jewish accounts of a creation envisioned as varyingly monstrous, unstable, and unknowable. In the second section, she explores how hagiographical literature queers notions of nature and places the very category of the human into question, in part by foregrounding the saint's animality, in part by writing the saint into the landscape. The third section considers material objects, as small as portable relics and icons, as large as church and monastery complexes. Ancient Christians considered all of these animate beings, simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, protective and in need of protection, lovable and loving. Viewed through the shifting lenses of an ancient ecopoetics, Burrus demonstrates how humans both loomed large and shrank to invisibility, absorbed in the rapture of a strange and animate ecology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e I. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH \u003ci\u003eKHORA\u003c\/i\u003e: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGY\u003cbr\u003e Prelude: Anticipations of an Eco-Chorology\u003cbr\u003e Dreaming \u003ci\u003eKhora\u003c\/i\u003e: Plato's \u003ci\u003eTimaeus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Interlude: Fragments of an Eco-Chorology\u003cbr\u003e Khroric Legacies: Readers of \u003ci\u003eTimaeus\u003c\/i\u003e and Genesis\u003cbr\u003e Interlude: Beginning Again with Scripture\u003cbr\u003e In\/Conclusion: \u003ci\u003eKhora\u003c\/i\u003e, God, Materiality\u003cbr\u003e Postlude: Beginnings, Again\u003cbr\u003e II. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANS\u003cbr\u003e Prelude: Ecocriticism as Queer Theory\u003cbr\u003e Before Hagiography, Autozoography: The \u003ci\u003eLife of Plotinus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Queerly Ecological: The \u003ci\u003eLives\u003c\/i\u003e of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt\u003cbr\u003e Interlude: Desertification\u003cbr\u003e Holy Disfigurations: The \u003ci\u003eLife of Syncletica\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Saint as Posthuman Assemblage: The \u003ci\u003eLife of Simeon the Stylite\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Interlude: Performance Art\u003cbr\u003e In\/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer Creatures\u003cbr\u003e Postlude: A Tough Love\u003cbr\u003e III. Things and Practices: Arts of Coexistence\u003cbr\u003e Prelude: Theorizing Things\u003cbr\u003e Things: Relics and Icons in an Animate World\u003cbr\u003e Things: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos\u003cbr\u003e : Fragments of a Material Theology of Things\u003cbr\u003e Things: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's Hexaemeron\u003cbr\u003e Desiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius\u003cbr\u003e : Words and Things\u003cbr\u003e \/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety\u003cbr\u003e : The Things That Matter\u003cbr\u003e Epilogue: Worm Stories\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52559224570136,"sku":"9780812250794","price":44.46,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/ancient-christian-ecopoetics-cosmologies-saints-things-hardback-9780812250794","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}