ITALY has always presented itself in the modern Anglophone mind as the quintessential urban society: art, style and high culture; ancient, medieval and Renaissance cities; modern urban blight, crime and immigration. Yet Italy has perhaps the longest and most continuous tradition of environmental thinking and writing, stretching from the bucolic ideal of the ancient Romans, through the religious stewardship of creation enshrined by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century in the monastic movement, to the nature mysticism of the high Middle Ages symbolized by Francis of Assisi.
IN THE MODERN ERA Italy took its place very early on alongside the American conservation movement, and by the later 20th century it boasted a fully aware — and politically active — environmental movement.
THIS VOLUME brings together, for the first time — in Italy or for an English-speaking audience — a collection of over 40 authors from this deep and broad tradition of Italian environmental writing. Poetry and prose, the essay, the political and economic tract, and the new arts are all represented in this collection.
