The Great Fire of London and the Ecocritical Debate in John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis | ||
| Beni-Suef University International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences | ||
| Volume 5, Issue 1, June 2023, Pages 294-312 PDF (549.01 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original research articles | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/buijhs.2023.310130 | ||
| Author | ||
| Eman Ebeida Mansour* | ||
| Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Mansoura University | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The aim of this paper is to display how Dryden’s metaphorical representations of natural elements in the Fire section of his historic poem Annus Mirabilis have foregrounded the ecocritical readings of human-environmental relationships, particularly with respect to the impact of the intriguing web of the sociopolitical facts on the London community. The paper uncovers Dryden’s timid call for an understanding of the environment as a sociopolitical category that dominates and manipulates humans’ lives, which is a typical practice of the ecocritical theory. The methodology adopted in this research is both qualitative and interpretive, as it focuses on the prevalent metaphoric representations of the ecological dilemma as uniquely used by the poet in two discrete stages: first, the ecological insights of Dryden’s animation of the natural through water/fire tropes, and second, the metamorphosis of the city as an ecological outcome of the metaphoric animation. Both stages reveal that Dryden’s delineation of the Great Fire of London in Annus Mirabilis has figuratively and intellectually foregrounded the key tenets of ecocriticism. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Annus Mirabilis; ecocriticism; ecological literacy; fire/water tropes; metamorphosis | ||
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