Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Periods
- Chapter 1 The Ancient World
- Chapter 2 Inspective Fruits
- Chapter 3 Plant Lives in the Literatures of Medieval England
- Chapter 4 Plant-Lore in the Botanical Renaissance
- Chapter 5 Literary Plants
- Chapter 6 Portraits of Plants
- Part II Anglophone Literary Forms
- Part III Global Regions
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - Inspective Fruits
Plants in Early Christian Literature
from Part I - Historical Periods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2025
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Periods
- Chapter 1 The Ancient World
- Chapter 2 Inspective Fruits
- Chapter 3 Plant Lives in the Literatures of Medieval England
- Chapter 4 Plant-Lore in the Botanical Renaissance
- Chapter 5 Literary Plants
- Chapter 6 Portraits of Plants
- Part II Anglophone Literary Forms
- Part III Global Regions
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines early Christian (Patristic) literature to see the confluence of Graeco-Roman literature with its topoi and evocations of landscapes or plants as habitats and attributes of the gods, with scriptural allusions to the fruitfulness of the earth as a sign of divine bounty and pleasure. Central to early Christian allusions to plants is Eden, site of the Fall, the defining trauma of human exile from it, and the displacement of paradise to an afterlife. The first part of the chapter charts the development of accounts of creation and Eden, starting with Philo of Alexandria, with whom hexaemeral literature (referring to the six days of creation) originates, in synthesis with Plato’s Timaeus. If plants are elements in the universal ordering of species at creation, they are also topoi in rhetorical-inventive analogies for literary genres or organisation. The relations between scriptural-exegetical and classical-literary are therefore not merely a question of iconography or attribute, but of inventive figures. Related to the meadow is the figure of the garland, which will be so central to Christian symbolism, with its diverse significance as wreath, crown, or varied garland. If the rosary provides one case of the Christian development of classical poetic type, albeit beyond the timeframe of early Christianity, another case, little explored in its literary antecedents, is the crown of thorns, central instrument of Christ’s passion, which is in the Greek of the Gospels a wreath of acanthus.
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants , pp. 23 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025