This Contentious Storm: An Ecocritical and Performance History of King Lear

Jennifer Mae Hamilton is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, funded by The Seed Box: A MISTRA+FORMAS Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, Linköping University, Sweden. She also lectures in ecocriticism at New York University, Sydney

• Prologue: The PlotIntroduction: The Case for King Lear Part 1 - EcocriticismChapter 1: Meteorological ReadingChapter 2: ‘What is the cause of thunder?’: The Storm’s Three Ambiguities Chapter 3: Cataclysmic Shame: Three Views of Lear’s Mortal Body in the StormPart 2 – Performance HistoryChapter 4: Ecocritical Big HistoryChapter 5: The Spectacular Jacobean TheatreChapter 6: Storms of Fortune: Industrial Technology and Nahum Tate,c.1680-c.1900 Chapter 7: Lear’s Head: The Rise of the Psychological Metaphor, 1908-1955.Chapter 8: Towards the Flood, 1962-2016Epilogue: The Art of NecessityBibliography

This Contentious Storm does beautiful work of interweaving literary ecocriticism, theatre history, contemporary ecological theory, and historical and philosophical approaches to meteorology and performance ... [Hamilton] skilfully integrates rigorous research and good-humouredly conceals the labour that makes the work such joy to read. This Contentious Storm is a bright exemplar of what theatre and performance can contribute to interdisciplinary environmental humanities conversations, breaching literary and performance-based approaches. It will soon be impossible to think of theatre history and ecology together without reference to this book.