Davies, J orcid.org/0000-0001-8359-6265 (Cover date: 2 October 2019) Noah’s Dove: The Anthropocene, the Earth System and Genesis 8:8-12. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 23 (4). pp. 337-349. ISSN 1468-8417
Abstract
This essay reads the Flood narrative of Genesis 6–8 as a myth for the geological present. Discussions of the Anthropocene have turned in part on questions about the relationship between life and the nonliving world. Here, I assess Dipesh Chakrabarty’s interventions in those discussions, especially his celebrated essay on ‘The Climate of History,’ in the light of recent Earth system science. I counterpose Chakrabarty’s account of the life/world relationship to the version of the Flood story recounted in the Yahwistic source of Genesis. The Yahwist envisages a primordial complicity between the organic and the telluric. I examine the Yahwist’s narrative in detail, focusing in particular on the motif of the dove whose disappearance shows that the deluge has abated. The Flood myth might provide a starting point for an environmental politics that goes beyond a ‘green’ concern for the biosphere to a concern with the Earth system itself.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 ASLE-UKI. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | biogeochemistry; Dipesh Chakrabarty; Epic of Gilgamesh; Noachian flood; Yahwist |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of English (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 Jul 2019 08:41 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jul 2021 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14688417.2019.1706611 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:148531 |