Experience of Disaster in Early Modern English Literature

Sophie Chiari is a tenured professor of early modern English Literature at Université Clermont Auvergne. She holds a doctoral degree from Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3, France, and she received her accreditation to supervise research from Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle. Among her recently published collections of essays are Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature (2018) and Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare, co-edited with John Mucciolo (2019). Her monograph Shakespeare’s Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment, was published in 2019 and her latest book, entitled Shakespeare and the Environment: A Dictionary, was published in early 2022.

• General IntroductionSophie ChiariPART I. Extreme ConditionsChapter 1‘Shakespeare, Natural Disaster, and Atmospheric Phenomena’Geraldo U. de SousaChapter 2‘Frozen: English Journeys to the End of the World’Sophie Lemercier-GoddardChapter 3‘Musical Representations of Natural Phenomena in Early Modern English Madrigals’Chantal SchützPART II. Tempestuous SkiesChapter 4‘Man in Stormy Weathers in the Age of Shakespeare’Danièle Berton-CharrièreChapter 5‘The Storms of Othello in 1613’David M. BergeronChapter 6‘Francis Bacon and the Mastery of the Winds’Angus VinePART III. Biblical CalamitiesChapter 7‘The Plague of Gnats in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’Sophie ChiariChapter 8‘Michael Drayton and the Invention of the Disaster Epic: Eco-catastrophe in the Late Poems’Todd A. BorlikChapter 9‘John Ray’s Inquiry into the Future Dissolution of the World in The Miscellaneous Discourses’Mickaël PopelardCoda‘Climate Change and the Postsecular in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed’John Gillies