ABSTRACT
Nearly a decade ago, I came across Cheryl Glotfelty's Ecocriticism Reader and realized that thinking more about Old English literary environments might make an interesting project. I began by reading the poems from the perspective of how their depictions of landscape – primarily wilderness – diverged from the descriptions of historical Anglo-Saxon landscapes in documentary texts such as the charters and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – primarily agricultural lands. I initially imagined a book about the landscapes of Old English poetry and prose. But as I began reading ecocritical theory and Old English literature against one another, I realized a wide range of additional readings was possible and, indeed, essential, including postcolonial and feminist ecocriticisms, critical animal studies, and philosophical meditations on objects and things. Rather than attempting a comprehensive study of landscapes in Old English literature, I have in this study ranged more widely. The volume that has resulted constitutes a series of investigations of different topics that fall under the broadest possible ecotheoretical umbrella, including thing theory, animal studies, ruin aesthetics, and postcolonial ecocriticism, as well as landscape and wilderness studies that investigate the liminal and barrier functions of bodies of water. In what follows, I trace some connections among the different chapters in the book and then comment on some of what the book leaves out, and propose avenues for further study. I then take a brief look at three post-Conquest texts, the Durham encomium, the Domesday Book, and a late entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I conclude with some meditations on how literary study motivates and intersects with climate activism.
