Ken Hiltner is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Milton and Ecology and the editor of Renaissance Ecology: Imagining Eden in Milton's England.

For Hiltner a preoccupation with mimesis as the defining element of nature writing has blinded ecocritics to 'what else is pastoral in the Renaissance.' Chapters on 'Air Pollution in Early Modern London' and 'Environmental Protest Literature of the Renaissance' lead to 'Empire, the Environment, and the Growth of the Georgic'. The latter, in particular, is typical of the radical rethinking demanded by... [this] challenging extension of ecocritical achievement.- Terry Gifford (Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism) This book is a fresh departure from the long critical tradition that reads the pastoral figuratively or as a stock convention. For Hiltner, the pastoral in Renaissance England is... a form of nature writing... [and] reflects real environmental crises in and around London, fraught issues that sparked debates and influenced literature across different forms and genres.... Hiltner has made a valuable contribution to both early modern studies and ecocriticism.- Lowell Duckert (Sixteenth Century Journal) What is fascinating about What Else is Pastoral? is the way it tracks the gestation of one of the most pressing issues: how do we represent those processes and activities that our society can live neither with nor without? Hiltner challenges environmentally minded critics who focus on 'wilderness and nature' without accounting for the 'dynamic whereby we become conscious of the countryside and the earth.'... Hiltner's book does not overplay the relevance to contemporary ecological issues. Even so, the analogues are compelling, especially when he takes us over to Ireland to investigate the centrality of land to a postcolonial perspective.(Times Literary Supplement)

• IntroductionPart I. Literary Issues1. The Nature of Art2. What Else Is Pastoral3. What Else Was Pastoral in the Renaissance?4. Pastoral and Ideology, and the EnvironmentPart II. Environmental Problems5. Representing Air Pollution in Early Modern London6. Environmental Protest Literature of the Renaissance7. Empire, the Environment, and the Growth of GeorgicSelect BibliographyIndex

Ken Hiltner is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Milton and Ecology and the editor of Renaissance Ecology: Imagining Eden in Milton's England.

For Hiltner a preoccupation with mimesis as the defining element of nature writing has blinded ecocritics to 'what else is pastoral in the Renaissance.' Chapters on 'Air Pollution in Early Modern London' and 'Environmental Protest Literature of the Renaissance' lead to 'Empire, the Environment, and the Growth of the Georgic'. The latter, in particular, is typical of the radical rethinking demanded by... [this] challenging extension of ecocritical achievement.- Terry Gifford (Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism) This book is a fresh departure from the long critical tradition that reads the pastoral figuratively or as a stock convention. For Hiltner, the pastoral in Renaissance England is... a form of nature writing... [and] reflects real environmental crises in and around London, fraught issues that sparked debates and influenced literature across different forms and genres.... Hiltner has made a valuable contribution to both early modern studies and ecocriticism.- Lowell Duckert (Sixteenth Century Journal) What is fascinating about What Else is Pastoral? is the way it tracks the gestation of one of the most pressing issues: how do we represent those processes and activities that our society can live neither with nor without? Hiltner challenges environmentally minded critics who focus on 'wilderness and nature' without accounting for the 'dynamic whereby we become conscious of the countryside and the earth.'... Hiltner's book does not overplay the relevance to contemporary ecological issues. Even so, the analogues are compelling, especially when he takes us over to Ireland to investigate the centrality of land to a postcolonial perspective.(Times Literary Supplement)

• IntroductionPart I. Literary Issues1. The Nature of Art2. What Else Is Pastoral3. What Else Was Pastoral in the Renaissance?4. Pastoral and Ideology, and the EnvironmentPart II. Environmental Problems5. Representing Air Pollution in Early Modern London6. Environmental Protest Literature of the Renaissance7. Empire, the Environment, and the Growth of GeorgicSelect BibliographyIndex