Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance

Reviews / Votes

"Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance is a lively piece of speculative literary criticism that not only offers innovative readings of Gerard's text (a task that has challenged readers for centuries), but also how to read such a text. This book will delight the senses of scholars and students alike and is an important contribution equally to the field of ecostudies and to early modern studies more broadly. Not only does it answer important questions about how and why we might read Gerard or offer new ways to think about some of the plants that appear in literature, but it also reminds us that reading itself should be a joyful act of discovery. As a result, the book feels like play (in the best senses) more than stiff scholarship." - Jennifer Munroe, Professor Emerita, Department of English, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

"The chapters of this book may begin with Gerard but thereafter they spin a wide web, touching multiple representations of the plants discussed in literature, natural history, and art. The result is an original and suggestive picture of the imbrication of vegetal life in the early modern imagination. Reading Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance feels like an Elizabethan experience of play mixed with deep learning." - Rebecca Bushnell, Professor Emerita, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania

"Marvelous Vegetables in the English Renaissance is a work of stunning erudition that uses John Gerard as the origin point for a wide-ranging yet ever-thoughtful analysis of human-plant entanglements across Renaissance cultures. Engagingly written, in a lively prose that does not shy away from playfulness when the topic or moment requires, this book is clearly the work of a subtle critical mind with an incredible command of botanical history. Marvelous Vegetables is a remarkable example of scholarly focus and generosity, written with joy, rigour, and a kind of galvanizing good humour that remains all too rare." - Natania Meeker, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California