The spectre of “the elements” currently haunts the environmental humanities: this quasi-intuitive idea seems well on its way to replace Raymond Williams’ lamented word “Nature”.[1] Indeed, if “Nature” problematically relies on an essentialist dualist framework,[2] and even “environment” arguably seems to refer to that what surrounds the human, one of the allures of the turn […]
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Writing Nature Between Orphism and Prometheanism in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian Judge Holden, to cite W. Oliver Baker, easily ranks amongst the ‘the most engrossing and violent characters of American literature’.[1] A central character in Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West, Judge Holden accompanies the Glanton gang—a group […]
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An enduring question about the human condition concerns the riddle of embodiment, or how to comprehend the very meat of our existence. Rembrandt’s famous painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, captures the quandary. It is 1632 in Holland and we are witness to the dissection of a criminal hanged earlier in the day. […]
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