Climate Change and Original Sin
Prior to the Enlightenment era, how was the human-climate relationship conceived? Focusing on the most recent epoch in which belief in an animate environment still widely prevailed, Climate Change and Original Sin argues that an ecologically inflected moral system assumed that humanity bore responsibility for climate corruption and volatility.
The environmental problem initiated by original sin is not only that humans alienated themselves from nature but also that satanic powers invaded the world and corrupted its elements—particularly the air. Milton shared with contemporaries the widespread view that storms and earthquakes represented the work of fearsome spiritual agents licensed to inflict misery on humans as penalty for sin. Katherine Cox’s work discerns in Paradise Lost an ecological fall distinct from, yet concurrent with, the human fall. In examining Milton’s evolving representations of the climate, this book also traces the gradual development of ideas about the atmosphere during the seventeenth century—a change in the intellectual climate driven by experimental activity and heralding an ecologically devastating shift in Western attitudes toward the air.
- Christopher Kendrick, Loyola University Chicago, author of Milton: A Study in Ideology and FormA major contribution to the critical understanding of early modern notions of climate and climate change. This is an extremely impressive work of scholarship, and one of the very best works on Milton in recent years. Thorough, creative, and compelling.
- Dennis Danielson, University of British Columbia, author of Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary TheodicyA highly original, well researched, and impressively informative study full of bracing surprises and rich in fresh insights into Milton’s poetry, place, and times. Cox’s book embodies a thoroughgoing, detailed, and ultimately convincing insistence on the importance and interconnectedness for Milton (and beyond) of climate, meteorology, pneumatology, air, airs, winds, spirits, inspirations, exhalations, voices, and music.
- Milton Quarterly ReviewA work of highly original scholarship, one that presents groundbreaking research on early modern meteorology, acoustics, and pneumatic science and brings it to bear in fresh, remarkable readings of Milton's poetry. . . As it traces the evolution of Milton's thinking about climate, the book spans a range of subjects, including Renaissance instrument-making, metallurgy, and demonology. Cox presents this material with considerable skill, offering nuanced analyses of competing theories and practices. Her readings of Milton's poetry—from the Nativity Ode to Paradise Regained—are consistently persuasive and occasionally dazzling.
Katherine Cox is an independent scholar living in France.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. "Infant Cries": Meteorological Voices in The Nativity Ode
2. Early Acoustic Theory and the Aural Soul in Comus
3. The Power of the Air in Milton's Epic Poetry
4. "How cam'st thou speakable of mute": Satanic Acoustics in Paradise Lost
5. Milton and the Barometer: Climate Change in Pneumatic Science
6. "Throttled at length in the Air": Environmental Warfare and Climate Regained
Epilogue
Bibliography
