Waste and the Wasters - by Eleanor Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Eleanor Johnson corrects some commonly held (mis)assumptions concerning what the average medieval English person might've thought about what we now call the natural environment or the ecosystem. Reading both well-studied fourteenth- and fifteenth-century works (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and the Canterbury Tales), and lesser-known ones (Winner and Waster and Mum and the Sothsegger), as well as legal and municipal documents, sermons, moral and penitential tracts, practical and medical guides, plague narratives, and historical chronicles from the period, Johnson describes how poets used the resources of poetic language-meter, rhyme, alliteration, metaphor, simile, personification, characterization, plot, dramatic staging, repetition, and other literary devices-to think and feel their way into the problems of ecological peril, even though they lacked the science and scientific vocabulary we have today. Johnson explores how these writers combined multiple discourses from their particular, if narrow, vantage point to comment on ecological disasters, inventing their own "ecosystemic" language and commentary. As Johnson reminds us, the English Middle Ages had their share of environmental problems-air pollution, soil depletion, deforestation, Little Ice Ages, famines, and plagues-similar to the ones we face in the twenty-first century. Focusing on the word "waste" in its original usage across various texts, ranging from the literary to the legal, from the theological to the psychological, Johnson puts twenty-first-century concerned citizens in touch with kindred spirits in medieval England, fully aware of-and interested in-how human (mis)behavior might be connected to the natural world; how resource allocation, use, and pollution by one person might affect another; how environmental damage was linked to urbanization; and how one person's choices might affect the next generation. The book will be read primarily by those interested in medieval English literature, medieval historians, and literary scholars working in later periods, but Johnson also invites conversation with anyone working more broadly in the environmental humanities today"--

Book Synopsis

A groundbreaking examination of ecological thought in medieval England.

While the scale of today's crisis is unprecedented, environmental catastrophe is nothing new. Waste and the Wasters studies the late Middle Ages, when a convergence of land contraction, soil depletion, climate change, pollution, and plague subsumed Western Europe. In a culture lacking formal scientific methods, the task of explaining and coming to grips with what was happening fell to medieval poets. The poems they wrote used the terms "waste" or "wasters" to anchor trenchant critiques of people's unsustainable relationships with the world around them and with each other. In this book, Eleanor Johnson shows how poetry helped medieval people understand and navigate the ecosystemic crises--both material and spiritual--of their time.

Review Quotes

"A promising example of the ecological stories that medievalists and early modernists might tell. . . . what a joy it is to read the[se] stories about waste!"-- "The Yearbook of Langland Studies"

"A moving and powerful study of neglect and ecological damage as reflected in the literature of the Middle Ages."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"Johnson's study of medieval legal and literary ideas of 'waste' and 'wasters' belongs on the reading list of every scholar and advanced student of the poems Winner and Waster, Piers Plowman, Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as anyone concerned with modern ecological crises brought on by overly personalized and privatized views of waste 'products.' "-- "Choice"

"Lively and accessible . . . [this] powerful study of 'waste' and 'wasting' shows how premodern thinkers used the category of waste to think about the human impact on ecological and social networks. . . . Johnson convincingly argues that premodern texts can help us think through how questions of value and belief might help us respond to our ecological, political, and moral waste and waste making in our own precarious times. . . . Waste and the Wasters is a book that has much to teach us about how the ideas we hold and the language we use to think through them can have real effects on the material world. "-- "ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment"

"One of those rare academic books that remixes a collection of ideas--medieval poetry, land management, weather, bees, God's vengeance, and climate change--in a style that's eminently readable, bringing the past to life and connecting it to the present in one engaging sentence after another."-- "The Christian Century"

"Waste and the Wasters deftly maps the contours of ecosystemic imagination in medieval England through close engagement with one of its major vehicles: poetry. Johnson's compelling study shows the importance of dealing with premodern sources in all their complexity as they work to make sense of the dense relational landscape that they inhabit and their responsibilities within it."--Brooke Holmes, Princeton University

"A beautiful and urgent essay on ecosystemic thought in late medieval England that is also a call to action on the climate catastrophe now unfolding. Look to art, says Johnson, when there's no organized vocabulary for expressions of ecosystemic peril. Look to medieval poetry to find complex and ethical ruminations on what it is to waste and to be a waster, both critical communal problems tying individuals to larger concepts of social justice. In our current eco-meltdown, this book will emphatically not waste anyone's time."--Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University

"Literary scholars in the Anthropocene can't help but notice precarity, both precarity of time (there may not be much left!) and discursive precarity (does our discipline have much to offer?). Enter Eleanor Johnson. When we finish reading this vigorously conversational book, the ecosystem of our discipline will find refreshing new networks within which to work."--James Simpson, Harvard University

About the Author

Eleanor Johnson is associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. She is the author of several books including, Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama, also published by the University of Chicago Press.