The Marvels of the World : : An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700 / / ed. by Rebecca Bushnell.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• HerausgeberIn: Bushnell, Rebecca,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.) :; 35 illus.

Long before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal.Gathering together medical texts, herbals, and how-to books, as well as scientific, religious, philosophical, and poetic works dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, the anthology explores both mainstream and unconventional thinking about the natural world. Its seven parts focus on philosophy and science; plants; animals; weather and climate; ways of inhabiting the land; gardens and gardening; and European encounters with the wider world. Each section and each of the book's selections is prefaced with a helpful introduction by volume editor Rebecca Bushnell that weaves connections among these compelling pieces of the past. The early writers collected here wrote with extraordinary openness about ways of coexisting with the nonhuman forces that shaped them, Bushnell demonstrates, even as they sought to control and exploit their environment. Taken as a whole, The Marvels of the World reveals how many of these early writers cared as much about the natural world as we do today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I Natural Philosophy and Natural Knowledge -- Hebrew Bible, Genesis 1 -- Aristotle, Physics -- Lucretius, De rerum natura, or On the Nature of Things -- Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On the Nature of the Earth -- Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On the Elements -- Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, or Causes and Cures -- Alain de Lille, De planctu naturae, or The Complaint of Nature -- Roger Bacon, Opus majus, or Greater Work -- Saint Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei, or Disputed Questions on the Power of God -- Pseudo- Albertus Magnus, The Book of the Secrets of Albertus Magnus -- Giambattista della Porta, Magia naturalis, or Natural Magic -- Guillaume du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On the Seventh Day -- Hugh Platt, Floraes Paradise -- Francis Bacon, Novum organum, or New Organon, and New Atlantis -- Hannah Wolley, The Ladies Directory -- Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World -- Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society -- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “First Dream” -- PART II Plants -- Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, or On the Causes of Plants -- Aristotle, De anima, or Of the Soul -- Dioscorides, De materia medica, or Herbal -- Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Flowers -- Pseudo- Apuleius, The Old En glish Herbarium -- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women -- Pierre de Ronsard, “Ode to Cassandra” -- Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium, or On the History of Plants -- William Turner, A New Herbal -- John Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants -- Guillaume du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On Aconite -- William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden, On the Cultivation of Trees -- John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Auriculas -- George Herbert, “The Flower” -- Ralph Austen, A Treatise of Fruit Trees, and The Spiritual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees -- Johanna St. John, Manuscript Recipes -- Samuel Gilbert, Florist’s Vade- Mecum, On Auriculas -- PART III Animals -- Aristotle, Historia animalium, or The History of Animals -- Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Animals -- Physiologus -- Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, or On the Properties of Things -- Second- Family Bestiary -- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls -- Marie de France, Fables -- John Lydgate, “The Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep” -- Anselm Turmeda, The Disputation of the Donkey -- Michel de Montaigne, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond” -- John Caius, Of English Dogges -- Thomas Johnson, Cornucopiae -- Edward Topsell, The History of Four- Footed Beasts -- Gervase Markham, Markham’s Masterpiece -- Hester Pulter, “The Ugly Spider” -- Richard Lovelace, “The Snail” -- Margaret Cavendish, Grounds of Natu ral Philosophy -- Robert Hooke, Micrographia -- PART IV Weather, Climate, and Season -- Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places -- Aristotle, Meteorologica, or Meteorology -- Virgil, Georgics, Book 1, On the Storm -- Pseudo- Aristotle, Secreta secretorum, or The Secret of Secrets -- Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On Climate -- Wandalbert of Prüm, On the Names, Signs, Times of Planting, and Qualities of Weather of the Twelve Months -- William Ram, Rams Little Dodoen -- Thomas Tusser, An Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandrie -- William Shakespeare, King Lear -- Amelia Lanyer, “The Description of Cookham” -- William Shakespeare, The Tempest -- Thomas Jackson, The Raging Tempest Stilled -- Thomas Sprat and Robert Hooke, History of the Royal Society, On Weather -- Samuel Gilbert, Florist’s Vade- Mecum, Instructions for July -- PART V Inhabiting the Land -- Theocritus, Idyll 7 -- Virgil, Eclogue 1 -- Virgil, Georgics, On Farming -- Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Farming -- Walter of Henley, Dite de hosbondrie, or Boke of Husbandrye -- William Langland, Piers Plowman -- Second Shepherd’s Play, from the Wakefield Mystery Plays -- Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia -- Thomas More, Utopia -- Thomas Tusser, Five Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandrie -- William Harrison, Description of England -- Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde’s Calendar -- Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman, On Farming -- Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst” -- Mary Wroth, Urania -- Robert Herrick, “The Hock- Cart, or Harvest Home” -- Walter Blith, The English Improver Improved -- PART VI Gardens and Gardening -- Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Gardens -- Piero de’ Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum, or Book of Rural Commodity -- Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, or The Romance of the Rose -- Nicolas Bollard, On Planting and Grafting -- Thomas Hill, The Gardener’s Labyrinth -- Robert Laneham, Description of the Garden at Kenilworth -- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene -- Gervase Markham, The En glish Husbandman, On Grafting -- William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale -- William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden and The Countrie House wife’s Garden, On Domestic Gardening -- John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Nature and Gardening -- Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, Description of Her Garden -- René Rapin, Hortorum Libri IV, or Of Gardens -- Andrew Marvell, “The Mower Against Gardens” -- Hester Pulter, “The Snail, the Tulip, and the Bee” -- John Evelyn, Elysium Britannicum, or The Royal Gardens -- John Worlidge, Systema Horticulturae, or The Art of Gardening in Three Books -- PART VII Outlandish Natural Worlds -- Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natu ral History, On Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Fortunate Isles -- John Mandeville, Travels -- Leo Africanus, Della descrittione dell’Africa, or Description of Africa -- Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre de Brésil, or History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil -- Thomas Harriot, Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia -- Walter Raleigh, Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana -- Michael Drayton, “Ode: To the Virginian Voyage” -- John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum -- Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, Observations on Java -- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: A True History -- Recommended Reading and Bibliography -- Permissions to Reprint -- Index