In La Part du colibri (‘The Hummingbird's Share’), Pierre Rabhi, French farmer turned public environmentalist, writer, philosopher, and public figure, deplores what he calls the névrose écologique, to which he attributes the fact that so many people simply do not react in any significant way to the ecological crisis. An Amerindian legend of the hummingbird frames this autobiographical essay on ecological becoming. Thousands of years ago, Rabhi narrates, an immense fire started in a great American forest, ravaging the land and leaving most animals to gaze, still and powerless, at the disaster ahead. A single hummingbird, however, could be seen transporting water in an attempt to appease the fire. An armadillo asked the hummingbird if it really believed it could stop the fire. ‘I know, but I am doing my share’, the hummingbird responded. In the context of Western lives—urban or rural—can humans, like the other animals in the legend, reconcile the sense of the futility of their own actions with the need for more ecological lifestyles?

Often, we don’t. In the face of climate change, the overwhelming response seems to be either plain denial or hopelessness: in other words, climate-scepticism or cynicism. Curiously, both reactions re-appropriate tone and language from ancient philosophy. Yet the climate-sceptics know little of Sextus Empiricus, and the climate cynics have rarely heard of Diogenes.

This chapter will trace the strange resemblance between Diogenes—the scandalous, exiled philosopher who lived like a tramp in Ancient Greece—and modern figures of environmentalism like Rabhi, represented and stereotyped in the media for renouncing the comfort of modern civilization, living frugally on the outskirts of town, reprimanding the rest of humanity, sometimes even picking through the trash.

‘What can early modern French literature do for ecocriticism?’ This was Louisa Mackenzie's question during a roundtable discussion at a recent MLA convention. As she noted, it is a much better and more important question than ‘What can ecocriticism do for early modern French literature?’ and it caught the attention of the editors of the present volume. Mackenzie's point here is that we should be letting early modern French literature interrogate and shape contemporary theory and criticism, rather than applying existing ecocritical paradigms onto authors such as Rabelais or Ronsard. After many conversations and several follow-up panels (including one at the Renaissance Society of America's annual conference in Boston, with Mackenzie as chair), this point not only seemed increasingly pertinent, but it had also clearly struck a chord with colleagues who detected a groundswell of interest in re-reading works of early modern French literature from a particular angle. The present volume is the concrete product of this groundswell. Its title (Early Modern Écologies) is subtly bilingual, the acute accent (é) on the final word drawing attention to the fact that, in method and in conclusions, the chapters that follow are caught between languages and literary and critical traditions. Whether read from an Anglophone or a Francophone point of view, the book as a whole speaks, intentionally, with an accent.

As a whole, the present volume opens up a number of conversations around Mackenzie's compelling question. It is not the first collection of writings about French literature and ecocriticism: it arrives dans le sillage of a 2012 FLS volume on ‘The Environment in French and Francophone Literature and Film’ edited by Jeff Persels, a 2015 special issue of Dix Neuf titled ‘Ecopoetics/L’Écopoétique’, edited by Daniel A. Finch-Race and Julien Weber, a 2017 issue of L’Esprit créateur titled ‘French Ecocriticism/L’écocritique française’, also edited by Finch-Race and Weber, and Daniel Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus's volume French Ecocriticism. It is the first, however, to focus exclusively on the possible connections between early modern French literature and contemporary theoretical positions. Within the context of British literatures, of course, scholars have been prolific in asking environmental and ecological questions of early modern literature, as shown by the likes of Bruce Boehrer, Todd A. Borlik, Gabriel Egan, Ken Hiltner, Steve Mentz, Vin Nardizzi, Jeffrey Theis, Robert Watson, Tiffany Worth, and many others.