Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity (Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment)

Challenges the notion of how early modern women may or may not have spoken for (or even with) nature. By focusing on various forms of 'dialogue,' these essays shift our interest away from speaking and toward listening, to illuminate ways that early modern Englishwomen interacted with their natural surroundings. Front Matter....Pages i-xvii Introduction: In Dialogue with Nature: New Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity....Pages 1-11 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 N/nature and the Difference “She” Makes....Pages 15-35 First “Mother of Science”: Milton’s Eve, Knowledge, and Nature....Pages 37-54 Ecofeminist Eve: Artists Reading Milton’s Heroine....Pages 55-83 Front Matter....Pages 85-85 On Elizabeth Isham’s “Oil of Swallows”: Animal Slaughter and Early Modern Women’s Medical Recipes....Pages 87-104 Woolley’s Mouse: Early Modern Recipe Books and the Uses of Nature....Pages 105-127 Preserving Nature in Hannah Woolley’s The Queen-Like Closet; or Rich Cabinet....Pages 129-149 Front Matter....Pages 151-151 “Goeing a broad to gather and worke the flowers”: The Domestic Geography of Elizabeth Isham’s My Booke of Rememberance....Pages 153-174 The Secrets of Grafting in Wroth’s Urania....Pages 175-194 Language “like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass”: Environmental inscription in Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague....Pages 195-210 Afterword....Pages 211-217 Back Matter....Pages 219-241