Translating the Past and Imagining the Future(s)

Pedagogy Jan 2025

Translating the Past and Imagining the Future(s)

Rachel Linn Shields

Abstract

Abstract Middle English literature has not traditionally been a focus for ecocriticism, with the exception of a few texts — such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — that lend themselves to this conversation due to their wilderness settings and the contrasts they make between nature and human culture. Nonetheless, ecocritical readings of Middle English texts have the potential to provide undergraduate students with new perspectives and tools for their own environmental ethics — and even activism. This article suggests assigning medieval readings alongside more accessible twentieth-century science fiction that shares some of the former's formal traits, specifically concatenation (interlinked series) and adubbement (abundant ornamentation). This alignment of new and old texts, combined with a teaching strategy that incorporates close reading, translation, and adaptation, helps students read difficult Middle English texts ecocritically and then employ similar strategies in their own thinking about the environment. Studying a literary text is not entirely different from “reading” the material environment — and thus one is good practice for the other. Medieval poetic structures can teach students about reading and navigating complex ecological spaces and human entanglements with them.

Journal: Pedagogy
Published: 2025-01-01
DOI: 10.1215/15314200-11462991
Open Access: Closed
Topics: graduate education

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