[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This edited volume originates in a May 2023 workshop held on Lesbos concerning late antique and Byzantine ecocriticism. It is one among many recent studies engaging in the trend of ecologically-oriented studies in the humanities, and responds to Adam Goldwyn’s call in 2018 for more ecocritical studies of Byzantine literature.[1]
As the editors state in the first chapter, which serves as the introduction, the goal of the volume is to expose late antique / Byzantine texts to the “more-than-human elements in which they were once conceived, to the winds that once blew around them or waters that spilled on them, to the animals on which they were written or who populate their margins, to the plants that grow into them and out of them” (p. 1). This is what is meant by the “ecologizing” of the title. This brief introductory chapter also offers further insights into thinking about ecological matters, such as Cheryll Glotfelty’s problematization of the term “environment” as one that all too often harbours anthropocentric and dualistic perceptions of the world (p. 3). It is, in essence, that simplistic binary between the human and non-human that many of these chapters target. The introduction says nothing about the organization of the subsequent chapters, however, and the topics of the remaining dozen essays are quite disparate from one another. The introductory chapter could have explained the structure of the remainder of the volume.
Still, it is the very diversity of the topics that gives this volume particular strength, and that quality goes hand-in-hand with the goal of ecologizing texts and ideas not often considered within the environmental humanities. Some of the notable chapters creatively expand beyond the conventional bounds of what is deemed “ecological.”
For instance, the environmental humanities often focalize specific environmental settings in terms of different ecological zones (e.g., seas, deserts, and forests). Yet temporal settings such as nighttime are not often conceptualized as a distinct ecology. Douglas E. Christie challenges this neglect of the nocturnal, examining the ecology of the night in a series of late antique monastic stories. He does not merely conceptualize nighttime as a time of evils, as one might expect, but offers an intriguing balance between practical realities and idealized experiences of the nocturnal world. There is, for instance, the example of a positive encounter in the night, as with the charming tale of Abba Theonas venturing out at night to live among wild animals (p. 24), and, on the more practical side, the tale of Macarius of Alexandria navigating the desert at night by the stars, as if it were the sea (p. 26). This exploration of monks and their experiences of the nocturnal environment is further contrasted with our loss of the beauty of the night in the modern world due to light pollution (p. 21), usefully highlighting the differences of modern experiences from those of the (late) ancient world.
In a similar fashion, dreams are often thought of as a human-centric topic and do not often come up in ecological studies (an effect, again, of the simplistic dichotomy between the human and the non-human). Christopher Schliephak’s chapter turns to a series of dream interpretations in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica, or rather their cultural ecology, making the case that “dream narratives can be seen as a central source for reflecting on how humans – in both the present and the past – have looked at their particular environments” (p. 54). This is fleshed out with a variety of interesting examples of the environmental aspects of the Oneirocritica, such as Artemidorus’ assessment of animals and insects in dreams. It is by no means an exhaustive catalogue of the ecological aspects of the text (nor does it claim to be). This further points to an area of the Oneirocritica ripe for future study.
Even more so than dreams, the act of feasting is conventionally considered a characteristically human social phenomenon and thus might seem distinct from the ecological. Leila Williamson’s chapter turns to this subject within Ventatius Fortunatus’ poems, conceptualizing eating as an occasion when “the environment moves through us, we mingle with the environment, and eater and eaten transform each other. So eating is an intensely immediate and embodied ecological relationship” (p. 147). Several elements of feasts depicted by Fortunatus, such as attention to the ecosystems from which the food originated, are explored and characterized as references that disrupt “the anthropocentrism that might be assumed to be inherent to these genres” (p. 152), a particularly intriguing quality in the context of the panegyrical nature of many of these poems.
Beyond thematic examinations, ecologizing can focus on a genre or specific text not conventionally considered ecological. The chapter by Laura Borghetti concerns the use of wind and water in Eumathios Makrembolites’ twelfth-century novel Hysmine and Hysminias. A particular emphasis is placed on challenging the conventionally passive nature of ecological forces within the narrative (pp. 69-70). Both wind and water are convincingly argued to play a role in the novel’s tension between chastity and eroticism, expressing agency and forces that function as “literary energies” (p. 75). Even in this genre that seems to feature humans as the primary agents, Borghetti highlights the possibility that the elements of nature drive such narratives.
The genre of hexaemeral literature (texts concerning the six-day creation narrative of Genesis) is the subject of Kate Rigby’s chapter. She explores how authors “brought their reflections on the biblical creation narrative into conversation with the natural histories and philosophies current during their day” (p. 88). Given that such texts focus on the creation of the natural world, hexaemeral literature is perhaps the genre most in need of ecologizing. Anyone who has touched upon the subject realizes that previous scholarship is dominated by a tendency towards Quellenforschung, rather than what these texts can tell us about contemporary ideas of nature. Particularly noteworthy in Rigby’s treatment is the emphasis that many hexaemeral authors recognized continuities between human and animal, thus also demonstrating more nuance beyond the traditional assumption that the stewardship imperative of Genesis signified a clean delineation between human and animal. This further distinguishes such a view from the later capitalist/imperialist principle of the human domination of nature, though anthropic elements still appear throughout the genre. Rigby’s focus on links to hexaemeral authors’ lived realities is a useful corrective for the hasty and unwarranted assumption (which, unfortunately, still lingers in academic circles) that ancient and medieval Christians were so focused on spiritual matters that they neglected the world around them.
In step with the growing field of animal studies, Tristan Schmidt’s chapter targets the concept of “agency”, rightly noting that the term, though often appealed to off-handedly in academic studies, is a somewhat nebulous idea, used in different ways by individual scholars. This becomes more acute when discussing non-human agency. Schmidt’s chapter analyzes snippets of Byzantine texts to highlight the differences between two approaches to animal agency, which Schmidt terms the “intentionality-based approach” and the “impact-/participation-approach” (p. 104), each of which has its advantages. Thus, his contribution is notable for shining a spotlight on a deceptively complex concept within ecological studies that has been taken for granted. Moreover, his discussion has value anywhere the concept of “agency” is applied in academic studies.
These and most other chapters predominantly focus on literary evidence. The final two chapters are distinct from this text-centric focus. Michael D. J. Bintley’s chapter takes a strong archaeological approach to his topic on trees in early medieval Britain, and Glenn Peers’ chapter offers a fascinating study of the materiality of Byzantine visual media. Virigina Burrus’ chapter is the most unique of the bunch. It is styled as a sort of travelogue-study, following the path of Hilarion’s route around the eastern Mediterranean, narrating the author’s own experiences travelling through the same spaces.
The volume certainly succeeds in its laudable goal of restoring the ecological elements of late antique / Byzantine works. This is accomplished with particular attention to the experiential element of engagement with nature, bringing a more human touch to such academic studies and helpfully orienting the ecologizing theme as not merely one that is bogged down with abstract theoretical perspectives. This goes a long way, of course, toward the goal of moving such studies beyond the conventional human/non-human binary. This aspect is most evident in Burrus’ chapter but is also dotted throughout several others, as mentioned above in the case of Williamson’s chapter on the act of eating as enmeshing humans within the environment. It is also evident in Borghetti’s discussion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on humans’ intellectual abilities not being separable from our senses, given the role of our senses in understanding the world (p. 78).
There are some missed opportunities for cross-referencing and linking together discussions between the chapters that could have helped to create a more cohesive volume. Although the chapters are each on distinct topics, we come across occasional points of overlap. The only place where discussion of another chapter is meaningfully connected is in Ingvild Sælid Gilhus’ chapter on crocodiles, which fruitfully cites some of the agency discussion in Schmidt’s chapter (p. 125).
This is a commendable and valuable volume that furnishes an excellent array of studies and contributes to the worthwhile goal of ecologizing and expanding what ecologically-oriented studies can look like for the late antique and Byzantine worlds.
Authors and titles
- Weathering: Ancient Worlds Exposed (Thomas Arentzen & Laura Borghetti)
- Fieldwork: Following Saint Hilarion (Virginia Burrus)
- Night: An Ancient Monastic Ecology of Darkness (Douglas E. Christie)
- Edges: Coasts, Riverbanks, and Waterscapes in Late Ancient Texts (Marco Formisano)
- Dream: The Cultural Ecology of Dreaming in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (Christopher Schliephake)
- Energies: Wind, Water and the Literary Ecosystem in a Twelfth-Century Byzantine Novel (Laura Borghetti)
- Behold!: The Equivocal Ecopoetics of Wonder in Late Ancient Homilies on Creation (Kate Rigby)
- Agency: A Core Concept in the Cultural History of Human-Animal Relations (Tristan Schmidt)
- Crocodiles: Frightening Reptiles and Monastic Imagination (Ingvild Sælid Gilhus)
- Physiologizing: The Meaning of Species Un/Ravelled (Thomas Arentzen)
- Feast!: Venantius Fortunatus’ Poetic Feasts (Leila Williamson)
- Thicket: Trees and Belief in Britain after Rome (Michael D. J. Bintley)
- Medianature: Dirt, Stone, Water, and Sky as Representational Fields (Glenn Peers)
Notes
[1] Goldwyn, A. J. (2018), Byzantine Ecocriticism: Women, Nature, and Power in the Medieval Greek Romance. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 32-33.