Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-oriented Literature

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Author :
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813919058
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-oriented Literature by : Patrick D. Murphy

Download or read book Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-oriented Literature written by Patrick D. Murphy and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, the emerging field of ecocriticism—nature-sensitive literary studies—began to establish and define itself. Arguing that the field has matured to the point where it requires a thorough critique and new theoretical underpinnings, Patrick D. Murphy suggests a variety of ways ecocriticism can become more inclusive in its objects of study and more sophisticated in its methodologies. According to Murphy, ecocriticism in the United States has been too narrowly associated with the study of nonfiction. To broaden the field's purview, he proposes a new taxonomy that draws an important distinction between nature writing—a nonfiction essay form descended from Henry David Thoreau—nature literature, which includes fiction and poetry, and environmental literature, which is inspired by and concerned with a threatened natural world. He also urges ecocritics to expand their study to international literature, and he proceeds to survey nature-oriented prose from Central America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, Spain, and Japan. On a theoretical level, Murphy addresses the relationship of ecofeminism to postmodernism and provides interpretations of contemporary American multicultural and women's literature, including works by Gary Snyder, Simon Ortiz, Jane Brox, Pat Mora, Lori Anderson, Nora Naranjo-Morse, Sallie Tisdale, and Terry Tempest Williams. Applying his theories of ecocritical analysis to underappreciated or unknown literature, especially fiction and poetry by American women writers of color, Murphy introduces his fellow critics to authors ripe for ecocritical analysis. Murphy's wide-ranging book will no doubt serve as a watershed in the development of ecocriticism.

Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739131753
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies by : Patrick D. Murphy

Download or read book Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies written by Patrick D. Murphy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-07-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ecocritical Explorations, Patrick D. Murphy explores environmental literature and environmental cultural issues through both theoretical and applied criticism. He engages with the concepts of referentiality, simplicity, the nation state, and virtual reality in the first section of the book, and then goes on to interrogate these issues in contemporary environmental literature, both American and international. He concludes his argument with a discussion of the larger frames of family dynamics and un-natural disasters, such as hurricanes and global warming, ending with a chapter on the integration of scholarship and pedagogy in the classroom, with reference to his own teaching experiences. Murphy's study provides a wide ranging discussion of contemporary literature and cultural phenomena through the lens of ecological literary criticism, giving attention to both theoretical issues and applied critiques. In particular, he looks at popular literary genres, such as mystery and science fiction, as well as actual disasters and disaster scenarios. Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies is a timely contribution to ecological literary criticism and an insightful look into how we represent our relationship with the environment.

American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism

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Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816517923
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism by : Joni Adamson

Download or read book American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism written by Joni Adamson and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although much contemporary American Indian literature examines the relationship between humans and the land, most Native authors do not set their work in the "pristine wilderness" celebrated by mainstream nature writers. Instead, they focus on settings such as reservations, open-pit mines, and contested borderlands. Drawing on her own teaching experience among Native Americans and on lessons learned from such recent scenes of confrontation as Chiapas and Black Mesa, Joni Adamson explores why what counts as "nature" is often very different for multicultural writers and activist groups than it is for mainstream environmentalists. This powerful book is one of the first to examine the intersections between literature and the environment from the perspective of the oppressions of race, class, gender, and nature, and the first to review American Indian literature from the standpoint of environmental justice and ecocriticism. By examining such texts as Sherman Alexie's short stories and Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead, Adamson contends that these works, in addition to being literary, are examples of ecological criticism that expand Euro-American concepts of nature and place. Adamson shows that when we begin exploring the differences that shape diverse cultural and literary representations of nature, we discover the challenge they present to mainstream American culture, environmentalism, and literature. By comparing the work of Native authors such as Simon Ortiz with that of environmental writers such as Edward Abbey, she reveals opportunities for more multicultural conceptions of nature and the environment. More than a work of literary criticism, this is a book about the search to find ways to understand our cultural and historical differences and similarities in order to arrive at a better agreement of what the human role in nature is and should be. It exposes the blind spots in early ecocriticism and shows the possibilities for building common groundÑ a middle placeÑ where writers, scholars, teachers, and environmentalists might come together to work for social and environmental change.

Transversal Ecocritical Praxis

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739182714
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Transversal Ecocritical Praxis by : Patrick D. Murphy

Download or read book Transversal Ecocritical Praxis written by Patrick D. Murphy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Transversal Ecocritical Praxis: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique, Patrick D. Murphy, Ph.D, utilizes ecocriticism and ecofeminism to develop his concept of transversal practice: an interdisciplinary combination of theory and applied criticism. He begins by explaining the necessity for cutting across disciplinary boundaries of all kinds in order to address the ecological dimensions of culture and literature. The dialogical foundation of this orientation is elaborated through a consideration of the theories of Mikhail Bkahtin, particularly in terms of the ethical responsibilities of the reader and critic. Murphy then takes up issues of identity and subject formation in relation to genetics, embodiment, and selfhood. These same issues play out in the history of the aesthetic category of the sublime, which the author critiques from an ecofeminist perspective. Following that, he turns attention to cultural issues of consumption, both at home and internationally, looking particularly at postcolonial literature and forms of resistance to globalizations and agricultural land grabs. Resistance and postcolonial literature is further analyzed through consideration of two book-length Latin American poetic sequences, one by Pablo Neruda and the other by Ernesto Cardenal. Switching from works focused on the present, Murphy turns his attention then to how these themes play out in the future oriented worlds of science fiction. He concludes with two chapters that combine ecocriticial cultural critique and economic analysis in studies of the destructive role of megadams, particularly in Asia, and the impact of the combined threats of peak oil and climate change on one island's tourist economy. The conclusion contains a discussion of further drivers of future ecocritical analysis. Traversing a wide range of examples, literary, cultural and economic, this work fleshes out the benefits of an ethically grounded interdisciplinary ecocriticism.

Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9401203555
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies by :

Download or read book Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies is a collection of essays written by European and North American scholars who argue that nature and culture can no longer be thought of in oppositional, mutually exclusive terms. They are united in an effort to push the theoretical limits of ecocriticism towards a more rigorous investigation of nature’s critical potential as a concept that challenges modern culture’s philosophical assumptions, epistemological convictions, aesthetic principles, and ethical imperatives. This volume offers scholars and students of literature, culture, history, philosophy, and linguistics new insights into the ongoing transformation of ecocriticism into an innovative force in international and interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies.

Nature Prose

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192870874
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (928 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature Prose by : Dominic Head

Download or read book Nature Prose written by Dominic Head and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature Prose seeks to explain the popularity and appeal of contemporary writing about nature. This book intervenes in key areas of contemporary debate about literature and the environment and explores the enduring appeal of writing about nature during an ecological crisis. Using a range of international examples, with a focus on late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century writing from Britain and the US, Dominic Head argues that nature writing contains formal effects which encapsulate our current ecological dilemma and offer a fresh resource for critical thinking. The environmental crisis has injected a fresh urgency into nature writing, along with a new piquancy for those readers seeking solace in the nonhuman, or for those looking to change their habits in the face of ecological catastrophe. However, behind this apparently strong match between the aims of nature writers and the desires of their readers, there is also a shared mood of radical uncertainty and insecurity. The treatment and construction of 'nature' in contemporary imaginative prose reveals some significant paradoxes beneath its dominant moods, moods which are usually earnest, sometimes celebratory, sometimes prophetic or cautionary. It is in these paradoxical moments that the contemporary ecological crisis is formally encoded, in a progressive development of ecological consciousness from the late 1950s onwards. Nature prose, fiction and nonfiction, is now contemporaneous with a defining time of crisis, while also being formally fashioned by that context. This is a mode of writing that emerges in a world in crisis, but which is also, in some ways, in crisis itself. With chapters on remoteness, exclusivity, abundance, and rarity, this book marks a turning point in how literary criticism engages with nature writing.

Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 023035839X
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies by : G. Garrard

Download or read book Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies written by G. Garrard and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecocriticism is one of the most vibrant fields of cultural study today, and environmental issues are controversial and topical. This volume captures the excitement of green reading, reflects on its relationship to the modern academy, and provides practical guidance for dealing with global scale, interdisciplinarity, apathy and scepticism.

Visions of the Land

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Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813921066
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Visions of the Land by : Michael A. Bryson

Download or read book Visions of the Land written by Michael A. Bryson and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bryson (humanities, Evelyn T. Stone U. College, Roosevelt U.) discusses the connections between the representation of nature and the practice of science in America from the 1840s to the 1960s, as presented in the texts of seven American writers: John Charles Fremont, Richard Byrd, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, John Wesley Powell, Susan Cooper, Rachel Carson, and Loren Eiseley. The author considers how various scientific perspectives have influenced environmental attitudes; how selected writers of varied backgrounds, scientific training, and geographic experience have represented nature through a variety of natural sciences; and the relations among science, nature, language, and the human community. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730-1837

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230583903
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730-1837 by : B. Keegan

Download or read book British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730-1837 written by B. Keegan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-05-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study shows how poets worked within and against the available forms of nature writing to challenge their place within physical, political, and cultural landscapes. Looking at the treatment of different ecosystems, it argues that writing about the environment allowed labouring-class poets to explore important social and aesthetic questions.

Early American Nature Writers

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 031334681X
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Early American Nature Writers by : Daniel Patterson

Download or read book Early American Nature Writers written by Daniel Patterson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the environment is of growing concern to students and general readers, nature writing is especially meaningful. This book profiles the literary careers of 52 early American nature writers, such as John James Audubon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Mabel Osgood Wright. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and discusses the writer's life and works. Entries close with primary and secondary bibliographies, and the encyclopedia ends with suggestions for further reading. Global warming, pollution, and other issues have made the environment a topic of constant discussion these days. Many environmental concerns were treated by early American nature writers, who recognized the beauty of the natural world in an age of commercial expansion. Some of the most famous writers of the 18th and 19th centuries wrote about nature, and their works are stylistic masterpieces. At a time when students are being encouraged to read and write about nonfiction, these masterworks of early American nature writing are all the more important. This book gives students and general readers a welcome introduction to early American nature writers.

The Nature Essay

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900438927X
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature Essay by : Simone Schröder

Download or read book The Nature Essay written by Simone Schröder and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Nature Essay: Ecocritical Explorations Simone Schröder offers the first extended account of the nature essay. Her ecocritical readings of essays engage with the genre's central epistemological and poetic paradigms, revealing its unique capacity to serve as a platform for environmental discourse.

Linda Hogan and Contemporary Taiwanese Writers

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498521630
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Linda Hogan and Contemporary Taiwanese Writers by : Peter I-min Huang

Download or read book Linda Hogan and Contemporary Taiwanese Writers written by Peter I-min Huang and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-16 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linda Hogan and Contemporary Taiwanese Writers: an Ecocritical Study of Indigeneities and Environment is the first full length single-authored study of Native American writer Linda Hogan and the first book to address Hogan’s poetry and prose primarily from ecocritical perspectives (inclusive of ecofeminism, environmental justice, postcolonial ecocriticism, and animal studies). It also is unique for the reason that it is a comparative study of the work of Hogan and writings by Taiwanese environmental writers, scholars, and activists. Chapter One, which serves as the introduction to the book, written by and from the perspective of an indigene, begins by giving readers a glimpse into the kind of world in the east in which the author came of age. It then relates this world to the western worlds that Hogan writes about in her poetry and prose. Chapter Two focuses on Hogan’s most recently published novel, People of the Whale (2008), and on the arguments that the novel makes about the environmentally unsustainable acts of corporate globalization that involve the trade in endangered animal species. Huang relates those arguments to the oil industry in Taiwan and to the extirpation of cetacean species in the waters of Taiwan by this industry. Chapter Three is an analysis of the novel Mean Spirit (1990). Huang reads this novel mostly through the lens of environmental justice arguments. Chapter Four addresses the novel Solar Storms (1995) from the perspective of ecofeminist theory and in the context of the issue of the escalation of mega-dams in East Asia. Chapter Five analyses the novel Power from animal studies perspectives. Chapter Six is a comparative studies reading of poems by several prominent Chinese, Taiwanese, and Aboriginal poets—Taiwanese poet Ka-hsiang Liu, Paiwan poet Mona Neng, Atayal poet Walis Nokan, and Chinese-Taiwanese poet Guangzhong Yu—and Hogan’s latest collection of poetry, entitled Dark. Sweet: New & Selected Poems (2014). In his reading of this work, Huang relies on a definition of “ecopoetry” in Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street’s recently published The Ecopoetry Anthology (2013). He also brings together the main theoretical ecocritical terms that he discusses in the previous chapters.

East Asian Ecocriticisms

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137345365
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (373 download)

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Book Synopsis East Asian Ecocriticisms by : S. Estok

Download or read book East Asian Ecocriticisms written by S. Estok and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East Asian Ecocriticisms presents original essays from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China that define and characterize trends in East Asian ecocriticism. Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives in environmental thought and scholarship, this volume presents valuable and original contributions to global conversations.

Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1666935379
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (669 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan by : Iping Liang

Download or read book Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan written by Iping Liang and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan presents a historical overview of vegetal ecocriticism in Taiwan. Divided into 12 chapters, it examines the human-plant entanglements on the island. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, such as the imperial plant explorations, the military casuarina afforestation, the mangrove conservation movement, the ecofeminist rooftop garden, the Indigenous millet restoration, the underground mycorrhizal network in urban Taipei, etc., it discloses the phyto-politics in the historical context of the vegetal materialist condition of the island. Intersecting the poetics and politics of plant narratives, it presents the multispecies plantscapes of the island. The first of its kind, the collection launches the historical and localized critical plant studies in Taiwan.

In Nature's Name

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226284468
Total Pages : 700 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis In Nature's Name by : Barbara T. Gates

Download or read book In Nature's Name written by Barbara T. Gates and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, hundreds of British women wrote about and drew from nature. Some—like the beloved children's author Beatrix Potter, who produced natural history about hedgehogs as well as fiction about rabbits—are still familiar today. But others have all but disappeared from view. Barbara Gates recovers these lost works and prints them alongside little-known pieces by more famous authors, like Potter's field notes on hedgehogs, reminding us of better known stories that help set the others in context. The works contained in this volume are as varied as the women who produced them. They include passionate essays on the protection of animals, vivid accounts of travel and adventure from the English seashore to the Indian Alps, poetry and fiction, and marvelous tales of nature for children. Special features of the book include a detailed chronology placing each selection in its historical and literary context; biographical sketches of each author's life and works; a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary literature; and over sixty illustrations. An ideal introduction to women's powerful and diverse responses to the natural world, In Nature's Name will be treasured by anyone interested in natural history, women, or Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199908192
Total Pages : 600 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism by : Greg Garrard

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism written by Greg Garrard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism provides a broad survey of the longstanding relationship between literature and the environment. The moment for such an offering is opportune in many respects: multiple environmental crises are increasingly inescapable at both transnational and local levels; the role of the humanities in addition to technology and politics is increasingly recognized as central for exploring and finding solutions; and the subject of ecocriticism has reached a kind of critical mass, both within its Anglo-American heartlands and beyond. From its origins in the study of American Nature Writing and British Romanticism, ecocriticism has developed along numerous theoretical, historical, cultural and geographical axes, the most contemporary and exciting of which will be represented in the Handbook. The contributors include eminent founders of the field, including Michael Branch and Richard Kerridge, a number of key 'second-wave' ecocritics, and the best up-and-coming scholars. Topics covered include: Renaissance anxieties about nature; the challenges of representing climate change; the racialization of the environment in the early 20th century; language and the concept of biosemiotics; and the possibilities for environmental humour.

Local Natures, Global Responsibilities

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9042028130
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Local Natures, Global Responsibilities by :

Download or read book Local Natures, Global Responsibilities written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the New Literatures in English, nature has long been a paramount issue: the environmental devastation caused by colonialism has left its legacy, with particularly disastrous consequences for the most vulnerable parts of the world. At the same time, social and cultural transformations have altered representations of nature in postcolonial cultures and literatures. It is this shift of emphasis towards the ecological that is addressed by this volume. A fast-expanding field, ecocriticism covers a wide range of theories and areas of interest, particularly the relationship between literature and other ‘texts’ and the environment. Rather than adopting a rigid agenda, the interpretations presented involve ecocritical perspectives that can be applied most fruitfully to literary and non-literary texts. Some are more general, ‘holistic’ approaches: literature and other cultural forms are a ‘living organism’, part of an intellectual ecosystem, implemented and sustained by the interactions between the natural world, both human and non-human, and its cultural representations. ‘Nature’ itself is a new interpretative category in line with other paradigms such as race, class, gender, and identity. A wide range of genres are covered, from novels or films in which nature features as the main topic or ‘protagonist’ to those with an ecocritical agenda, as in dystopian literature. Other concerns are: nature as a cultural construct; ‘gendered’ natures; and the city/country dichotomy. The texts treated challenge traditional Western dualisms (human/animal, man/nature, woman/man). While such global phenomena as media (‘old’ or ‘new’), tourism, and catastrophes permeate many of these texts, there is also a dual focus on nature as the inexplicable, elusive ‘Other’ and the need for human agency and global responsibility.