Emily Naish

School of English

PhD Research Student

ejnaish1@sheffield.ac.uk
Jessop West

Full contact details

Emily Naish
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

Thesis title
‘Of Albion’s glorious Isle the Wonders whilst I write’: Poly-Olbion’s relationship to the natural world

Supervisors


Thesis abstract
My project explores how Michael Drayton’s topographical poem Poly-Olbion (1612/1622) provides a challenge to anthropocentric thinking about the natural world, through a detailed examination of its generic and literary inheritances and influences. Exploring a range of socioeconomic factors, the research situates Poly-Olbion in relation to other, more canonical Elizabethan and early-Stuart texts. Also encompassing its cartographic etchings and explanatory notes, the project will open a new way of reading the poem as a series of poetic conversations about what we now call ecological issues (e.g., deforestation, erosion, land use).

Other roles

Editorial assistant at Green Letters

Publications

  • '"Insatiable [Gourmandize] thus all things doth devour”: Reading the Threat of Human Greed along the Rivers of Early Modern England’, in Reading the River in Shakespeare’s England, eds. Lisa Hopkins and Bill Angus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, August 2024).
  • ‘“Why bastard? Wherefore base?”: The Reduction of Monarchy to “Nothing” in King Lear’, Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 3 (June 2019), pp. 25-46.
  • Blog post contributions including for Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (2022) and Northern Environmental Humanities Network (2022)
Qualifications
  • PhD English, University of Sheffield, 2020 - present
  • MA English Literary Studies, University of Exeter, 2018
  • BA (Hons) Fine Art, Falmouth University, 2014
Research interests

My project explores how Michael Drayton’s topographical poem Poly-Olbion (1612/1622) provides a challenge to anthropocentric thinking about the natural world, through a detailed examination of its generic and literary inheritances and influences. Exploring a range of socioeconomic factors, the research situates Poly-Olbion in relation to other, more canonical Elizabethan and early-Stuart texts. Also encompassing its cartographic etchings and explanatory notes, the project will open a new way of reading the poem as a series of poetic conversations about what we now call ecological issues (e.g., deforestation, erosion, land use).

Professional activities and memberships

Conferences:

  • 'Marsh to Fen: Reconceptualising Marshes as Fenlands in Seventeenth-Century English Literature' at IRHiS, University of Lille, November 2023 (invited speaker)
  • 'Transforming fenlands into poetry in Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion' at ASLE-UKI, University of Liverpool, September 2023
  • 'Human Avarice and Unruly Nymphs: Exploitation of the River in Poetry, Prose, and Cartography' at SRS, University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, July 2023
  • '"Full of bogges" and "of no use": Representing Fenlands in Early Modern England' at SCEMS PGR Research Afternoon, University of Sheffield, July 2023
  • 'Everyday Frustrations Encountered along the Poetic River in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England', RSA, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 2023 (travel grant awarded)
  • ‘"Savage"-like Men in English Woodlands and The Old Arcadia', at Northern Environmental History Network, November 2022 (invited speaker)
  • ‘"No wood, no Kingdome": The Writing of Forests and the English Literary Inheritance in the Elizabethan Age’, at ASLE-UKI, Northumbria University, September 2022
  • 'Remembering and Forgetting the History of Land in Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion’, at MEMSA, Durham University, July 2022
  • ‘Early Modern "Floods": Idealised and Anxious Rivers in Early Modern England’, at MEMS Festival, University of Kent, June 2022
  • ‘"Without stirring our feete out of a warme studie": Environment, Identity, and Travel in Early Modern England’, at PGR Colloquium, University of Sheffield, May 2022
  • ‘The Hermit’s "sweet retyred life": Poly-Olbion’s Challenge to Fearful Representations of Woodland Communities in Early Modern Literature’, at The London Shakespeare Centre and Shakespeare’s Globe, February 2022
  • ‘“Why bastard? Wherefore base?”: The Reduction of Monarchy to "Nothing" in King Lear’, at  Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal Conference, University of Exeter, June 2018

Co-organised conferences, series and panels:

  • SCEMS Early Modern Discussion Group series, University of Sheffield, 2021-present
  • Page, Performance and Culture, University of Sheffield, June 2024
  • "Verse with wings of skill": examining transitions between literary and practical texts in the early modern period, panel at ASLE-UKI, University of Liverpool, September 2023
  • SCEMS PGR Research Afternoon, University of Sheffield, July 2023
  • Homestead to Landscape: New Perspectives on Everyday Life in Early Modern England, panel at RSA, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 2023
  • Print and Practice: Spatialising the Early Modern, University of Sheffield, September 2022 (funding awarded by SRS)
  • Who Am I? Constructing Identity from Culture and Belief, University of Sheffield, May 2022
Conferences
  • ‘No wood, no Kingdome’: The Writing of Forests and the English Literary Inheritance in the Elizabethan Age’, Epochs, Ages, and Cycles: Time and the Environment, Newcastle, September 2022
  • ‘Remembering and Forgetting the History of Land in Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion’, Memory: Staging, Praxis & Practice, Durham, July 2022
  • ‘Early Modern ‘Floods’: Idealised and Anxious Rivers in Early Modern England’, MEMS Festival 2022, University of Kent (17th-18th June 2022)
  • ‘‘Without stirring our feete out of a warme studie’: Environment, Identity, and Travel in Early Modern England’, Who Am I? Constructing Identity from Culture and Belief, Sheffield, May 2022
  • ‘The Hermit’s ‘sweet retyred life’: Poly-Olbion’s Challenge to Fearful Representations of Woodland Communities in Early Modern Literature’, Home and Early Modernity, London, February 2022