Ecocritism and the Renaissance: A Study in Shakespeare and More

This study draws on ideas from the emerging field of literary criticism known as ecocriticism and extends its basic assumptions back to the Renaissance works of Thomas More and William Shakespeare. The research therefore includes primary Renaissance texts, current ecocritical works, and selections from the twentieth-century criticism from which ecocriticism developed. I investigate in detail More’s Utopia and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. The study takes into account the disparity between Renaissance attitudes towards the environment and current concerns about pollution and scarcity of resources, but I suggest that the questions asked by ecocritical scholars today, when applied to Renaissance texts, provide a fresh perspective from which to analyze and understand Renaissance man’s perceptions of his environment. My research further reveals that man’s perception of his natural environment inevitably illuminates his perception of and attitude toward himself and his society, and it is the inextricable links between man’s perception of himself, his society, and his natural world that have guided my inquiry.