Shakespeare's Starlings Literary History and the Fictions of Invasiveness
Author(s)
Fugate, Lauren
Miller, John MacNeill
Date Issued
November 1, 2021
Abstract
Scientists, environmentalists, and nature writers often report that all common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in North America descend from a flock released in New York City in 1890 by Eugene Schieffelin, a man obsessed with importing all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. This article uses the methods of literary history to investigate this popular anecdote. Today starlings are much despised as an invasive species that displaces native birds and does almost a billion dollars worth of damage to agriculture annually. Because of the starling's pest status, the Schieffelin story is considered a cautionary tale about the dangers of ecological ignorance. Diving into the history of the Schieffelin story reveals, however, that it is almost entirely fictional. Tracing how its elements emerged and changed over a century of retelling clarifies how the story came to shore up uncertainties in the bird's environmental history and to distract from the lack of data supporting the starling's supposedly disastrous impacts. In explaining how a fiction repeated over time attained the status of fact in debates about invasive species, this literary history suggests humanistic methods can serve as useful tools for understanding the value-laden narratives underpinning environmental attitudes and practices today.
Journal
Environmental Humanities
Department
English
Citation
Lauren Fugate, John MacNeill Miller; Shakespeare’s Starlings: Literary History and the Fictions of Invasiveness. Environmental Humanities 1 November 2021; 13 (2): 301–322. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9320167
Publisher
Duke University Press
Version of Article
Published article
DOI
10.1215/22011919-9320167
ISSN
2201-1919
Rights
© 2021 Lauren Fugate and John MacNeill Miller. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
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