ABSTRACT
Environmental disasters point to the agency of elemental forces, in spite of man’s ‘dream of achieving his own-self deification by radically isolating himself before an arbitrary god’. Showcasing the agency of the more-than-human, The Experience of Disaster in Early Modern English Literature explores what today may be termed ‘eco-catastrophes’ in England, from Shakespeare’s time to the end of the seventeenth century. Shakespeare imagined atmospheric disasters on the London stage, Bacon tried to understand them. Dekker described apocalyptic situations in an England in ruins because of men’s greed, Ray anticipated them. The idea that a disaster is a social, physical and emotional experience encompassing several distinctive moments is in line with D.J. DeWolfe’s general argument which posits that, in the specific process, at least six different phases can be identified: the ‘pre-disaster phase’, ‘impact phase’, ‘heroic phase’, ‘honeymoon phase’, ‘disillusionment phase’ and ‘reconstruction phase’.
