ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines metaphorical and actual uses of green glasses, for instance, with Andrew Marvell's famous green shade for his green thoughts, as well as other contemporary texts and genres that characteristically veiled themselves in green. It considers the ways in which historically specific concerns about and solutions to various forms of air pollution, both biological and industrial, interacted with the conception of certain forms of early modern writing as 'airs': that is, as materials breathed in and out as they were composed and read. The book shows how one Renaissance approach to verbal interactionas well as to a kind of herbal healing understood to respond well to what were called 'green wounds' might let us understand and thrive in a textual ecology that incorporates our own reading and writing today.
