OLD ENGLISH ECOTHEOLOGY: THE EXETER BOOK is available to order from Amsterdam University Press!
As Courtney Catherine Barajas points out from the beginning, “We live in a period of acute environmental crisis,” which makes her argument for an Old English ecotheology in the following pages all the more poignant.
Carla María Thomas, reviewing OEE in Modern Philology
Her conclusion, that the Exeter Book “reveals a worldview which acknowledges infinite connections between human and other-than-human members of the Earth community” (210), is a convincing reflection of the many lives that populate the pages of this manuscript
Michael D.J. Bentley, reviewing OEE in The Medieval Review
This book examines the impact of environmental crises on early medieval English theology and poetry. Like their modern counterparts, theologians at the turn of the first millennium understood the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and affirmed the independent subjectivity of other-than-humans. The author argues for the existence of a specific Old English ecotheology, and demonstrates the influence of that theology on contemporaneous poetry. Taking the Exeter Book as a microcosm of the poetic corpus, she explores the impact of early medieval apocalypticism and environmental anxiety on Old English wisdom poems, riddles, elegies, and saints’ lives.
The table of contents & introduction to OLD ENGLISH ECOTHEOLOGY are available to download for free. Students, early career researchers, and unaffiliated scholars are encouraged to reach out if they are unable to purchase copies.
Courtney Barajas 