Emily L. Sharrett
Dissertation Summary
In Eternal City, Earthly City: The Reach of Rome in Early Modern English Literature, Sharrett examines how the reception of Roman classic writings shaped debates about social ecology occurring on the stage and page in early modern England, especially in Shakespeare’s Roman plays and narrative poems. Sharrett concludes that these plays and poems interrogate and harness relationships among human and environmental forces in response to religious and secular writings from classical antiquity which had cast human relationships with the natural environment in political and ethical while occluding physical terms.
Research Interests
Reception of classical rhetoric in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British literature, especially Shakespearean poetry; Environmental humanities, especially ecofeminist approaches to literature; Performance theory; Literary theory