Marjorie Swann - Böcker

'I envy no body but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do.'A unique celebration of the English countryside and the most famous book on angling ever published, Walton's Compleat Angler first appeared in 1653. In 1676, at Walton's invitation, his friend Charles Cotton contributed his pioneering exploration of fly-fishing. The book is both a manual of instruction and a vision of society in harmony with nature. It guides the novice fisherman on how to catch and cook a variety of fish, on how to select and prepare the best bait and make artificial flies, and on the habits of freshwater fish. It also promotes angling as a communal activity in which the bonds of friendship are forged through shared experience of the natural world.Anecdotes, poetry, music, and song intersperse the rural descriptions, which promote conservation as well as sport. This new edition highlights the book's continuing relevance to our relationship with the environment, and explores the turbulent history from which it came.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

First published in 1653, The Compleat Angler is one of the most influential environmental texts ever written. Addressing a politically and religiously polarized nation devastated by warfare, disease, ecological degradation, and climate change, Izaak Walton’s famous fishing treatise stages a radical thought experiment: how might humanity’s enhanced relationship with the natural world generate a new kind of sustaining—and sustainable—social order beyond the traditional boundaries of the church, the state, and the biological family?Challenging the current scholarly consensus that reads Walton’s how-to manual as a conservative polemic camouflaged by fishlore, Marjorie Swann examines this richly complicated portrayal of the natural world through an ecocritical lens and explores other neglected aspects of Walton’s writings, including his depictions of social hierarchy, gender, and sexuality. In the process, Swann analyzes a host of noncanonical environmental texts and provides a groundbreaking reappraisal of Charles Cotton’s “Part II” of The Compleat Angler. This study extends the hydrological turn in early modern ecocriticism and demonstrates how, as a genre, angling manuals provide new insights into the environmental, cultural, social, and literary history of early modern England.Taking its place alongside landmark works of ecocriticism such as Green Shakespeare and Milton and Ecology, this fresh and timely reassessment of The Compleat Angler rightly ranks Izaak Walton among the most important environmental writers of the early modern era.

First published in 1653, The Compleat Angler is one of the most influential environmental texts ever written. Addressing a politically and religiously polarized nation devastated by warfare, disease, ecological degradation, and climate change, Izaak Walton’s famous fishing treatise stages a radical thought experiment: how might humanity’s enhanced relationship with the natural world generate a new kind of sustaining—and sustainable—social order beyond the traditional boundaries of the church, the state, and the biological family?Challenging the current scholarly consensus that reads Walton’s how-to manual as a conservative polemic camouflaged by fishlore, Marjorie Swann examines this richly complicated portrayal of the natural world through an ecocritical lens and explores other neglected aspects of Walton’s writings, including his depictions of social hierarchy, gender, and sexuality. In the process, Swann analyzes a host of noncanonical environmental texts and provides a groundbreaking reappraisal of Charles Cotton’s “Part II” of The Compleat Angler. This study extends the hydrological turn in early modern ecocriticism and demonstrates how, as a genre, angling manuals provide new insights into the environmental, cultural, social, and literary history of early modern England.Taking its place alongside landmark works of ecocriticism such as Green Shakespeare and Milton and Ecology, this fresh and timely reassessment of The Compleat Angler rightly ranks Izaak Walton among the most important environmental writers of the early modern era.