Revisiting Places: Can We Still Be Early Modern? Keynote Address, Early Modern French Conference of the Society for Early Modern French Studies, 5–7 July 2022, St Andrews

Abstract

This article articulates the places of early modern poetry with contemporary eco-theories. Mobilising the connectivities of οικος rather than the separations of environment, the author traces ecological senses of place in the poetry of Du Bellay, Jacques Peletier, and Ronsard, and reclaims Renaissance humanism from posthumanist detractors. Humanist pastoral poetry manifests the sense of connection claimed as the purview of contemporary concepts such as naturecultures or transcorporeality. Renaissance place, as an ecological habit of thought, contrasts favourably with modern veneration of wilderness which separates human from environs. The conclusion suggests continuities between Renaissance humanism and our academic humanities inasmuch as they privilege relational, rather than acquisitive or extractive, value systems. The text is a modified version of the keynote address to the 2022 SEMFS Conference and contains references to some of the papers presented in the spirit of archiving that stimulating intellectual space.