The intersection of technology, power, and hubris in the modern era has created a context in which we must rethink the relationship between human and nonhuman natures and cultures. Both the Anthropocene (according to one of its possible start dates) and the ecological turn in the study of literature can be situated in relation to the first detonation of nuclear weapons. According to some, our current epoch thus began in 1945, while more generally Gabriel Egan argues that environmentalism is ‘a response to the rapid increase in the power of human technologies and the hubris of the scientists and technocrats in charge of them’, with the first atomic test carried out by Oppenheimer and Segrè being selected as a turning point: ‘it carried a small, but quite real, chance (about one-in-fifty, some of them thought) of instantly igniting the world, and they decided to risk it’. Turning to sixteenth-century French texts in this context can help us reconceptualise the relation between humanity, human culture, and nonhuman nature. Some might resist such a move: in Forests: Shadow of Civilization, Robert Harrison argues that humanism divorces the human from the nonhuman, such that humans dominate nature. But claims such as that one merely confuse humanism with anthropocentrism. Early modern texts frequently explore the limits of humanity as well as humanity's place within the cosmos.