Pericles’s Humming Waters: Nonhuman Agency, Textual Criticism, and the Practice of Material Ecocriticism

Through an examination of the waters of Pericles, this essay enters a debate in ecocritical studies concerning how best to conceive and speak of nonhuman agency. Arguing that Shakespeare’s maritime scenes have a sophistication of ecological thought absent in those composed by his co-author George Wilkins, it seeks to demonstrate this point in part by scrutinizing the decisions made by modern editors of Pericles, thus illustrating how ecocriticism might benefit from engagement with textual criticism, and vice versa. The essay goes on to consider and critique claims consistently made by practitioners of material ecocriticism concerning the narrativizing potential of nonhuman agents.