Literature and Weather. Shakespeare ¿ Goethe ¿ Zola is dedicated to the relation between
literature and weather i.e. a cultural practice and an everyday phenomenon that has played
very different epistemic roles in the history of the world. The study undertakes an archaeology
of literature¿s affinity to the weather which tells the story of literature¿s weathery
self-reflection and its creative reinventions as a medium in different epistemic and social
circumstances. The book undertakes extensive close readings of three exemplary literary texts:
Shakespeare¿s The Tempest Goethe¿s The Sufferings of Young Werther and Zoläs The
Rougon-Macquarts. These readings provide the basis for reconstructing three distinct formations
negotiating the relationship between literature and weather in the 17th the 18th and the 19th
centuries. The study is a pioneering contribution to the recent debates of literature¿s
indebtedness to the environment. It initiates a rewriting of literary history that is
weather-sensitive the question of literature¿s agency its power to affect cannot be raised
without understanding the way the weather works in a certain cultural formation.
