In Ancient Christian Ecopoetics, Virginia Burrus facilitates a provocative encounter between ancient Christian theology and contemporary ecological thought.
Introduction
I. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGY
Prelude: Anticipations of an Eco-Chorology
Dreaming Khora: Plato's Timaeus
Interlude: Fragments of an Eco-Chorology
Khroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and Genesis
Interlude: Beginning Again with Scripture
In/Conclusion: Khora, God, Materiality
Postlude: Beginnings, Again
II. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANS
Prelude: Ecocriticism as Queer Theory
Before Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of Plotinus
Queerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt
Interlude: Desertification
Holy Disfigurations: The Life of Syncletica
Saint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the Stylite
Interlude: Performance Art
In/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer Creatures
Postlude: A Tough Love
III. Things and Practices: Arts of Coexistence
Prelude: Theorizing Things
Things: Relics and Icons in an Animate World
Things: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos
: Fragments of a Material Theology of Things
Things: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's Hexaemeron
Desiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius
: Words and Things
/Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety
: The Things That Matter
Epilogue: Worm Stories
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments