Apocalyptic Ecologies: From Creation to Doom in Middle English Literature

A meditative reflection on what medieval disaster writing can teach us about how to respond to the climate emergency.

When a series of ecological disasters swept medieval England, writers turned to religious storytelling for precedents. Their depictions of biblical floods, fires, storms, droughts, and plagues reveal an unsettled relationship to the natural world, at once unchanging and bafflingly unpredictable. In Apocalyptic Ecologies, Shannon Gayk traces representations of environmental ...