The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants

Elucidates the long history of plants in literature across global traditions, examining both literary form and cultural context.

Bonnie Lander Johnson (Edited by)

9781108837736, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2025

406 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.7 cm, 0.72 kg

'A well-researched and much-needed addition to the Cambridge Handbook lineup … Recommended.' L. K. Miller, Choice

The first of its kind, this wide-ranging, accessible handbook covers literary engagement with plants in over two thousand years of writing from around the world. It includes within its broad ambit historical periods of Latin, Norse and Anglophone plant literatures, prominent plant genres, and the literatures of major global regions. Chapters explore the history of literary thinking about plants as creatures that do or do not resemble us; our use of plants to negotiate geo-political conflict; the ethical dimension of plant sensibilities; the moral dimension of our desire to engage aesthetically with plants; the ways in which human-plant relations have been used to make and unmake national and ethnic identities; the role of plant-writing in the development of literary form; and the ways we have used plants to navigate modernity's cultural and intellectual shift from theological engagement with the created world to the discourses of modern science.

Part I. Historical Periods: 1. The ancient world: us and them Rebecca Armstrong
2. Inspective fruits: plants in early Christian literature Clare Lapraik Guest
3. Plant lives in the literatures of medieval England Michael Bintley
4. Plant-lore in the botanical renaissance: grafting myth and science Todd Borlik
5. Literary plants, 18th – 19th century Stephen Bending
6. Portraits of plants, 19th – 20th century Claudia Tobin
Part II. Anglophone Literary Forms: 7. Useful books: herbals and gardening manuals Jessica M. Rosenberg
8. Shakespeare's plants then and now Bonnie Lander Johnson
9. Metaphysical subjects and cavalier objects in 17th century plant lyric Robert N. Watson
10. Speculative fiction and the contemporary novel T. S. Miller
11. Aftermath: thinking and healing with grass in contemporary poetry Holly Corfield Carr
Part III. Global Regions: 12. Plants in the French and Francophone literary tradition Giulia Pacini
13. Early American plant writing Michael Ziser
14. Plants in the literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean Lesley Wylie
15. Plants in the literatures of Australia John Charles Ryan
16. Plants in the literatures of Southern Africa Dan Wylie
17. Lotus: an un-still life in the literatures of China Xiaofei Tian
18. Plants in the literatures of India Sourit Bhattacharya
19. Tree-rings of Middle Eastern poetry Efe Khayyat.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]