Encountering Water in Early Modern Europe and Beyond : : Redefining the Universe through Natural Philosophy, Religious Reformations, and Sea Voyaging / / Lindsay Starkey.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Starkey, Lindsay,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Environmental Humanities in Pre-Modern Cultures ; 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (274 p.)

Both the Christian Bible and Aristotle's works suggest that water should entirely flood the earth. Though many ancient, medieval, and early modern Europeans relied on these works to understand and explore the relationships between water and earth, particularly sixteenth-century Europeans were especially concerned with why dry land existed. This book investigates why sixteenth-century Europeans were so interested in water's failure to submerge the earth when their predecessors had not been. Analyzing biblical commentaries as well as natural philosophical, geographical, and cosmographical texts from these periods, Lindsay Starkey shows that European sea voyages to the Southern Hemisphere combined with the traditional methods of European scholarship and religious reformations led sixteenth-century Europeans to reinterpret water and earth's ontological and spatial relationships. The manner in which they did so also sheds light on how we can respond to our current water crisis before it is too late.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Why Water? -- 1. Athens and Jerusalem on Water -- Part I. Water in Exegetical, Natural Philosophical, Cosmographical, and Geographical Texts of c.1000-1600 -- 2. Gathering Water in Exegetical Texts -- 3. Defining Water in Natural Philosophical Texts -- 4. Describing and Depicting Water in Cosmographical and Geographical Texts -- Part II. Why Water -- 5. Water in Newly Rediscovered Ancient and Medieval Texts -- 6. Exploring the Created Universe through Water -- 7. Sea Voyages and the Water-Earth Relationship -- Afterword : The Redefinition of the Universe and the Twenty-First-Century Water Crisis -- General Bibliography -- Index