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The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism will provide 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 Cheryll Glotfelty and Jonathan Bate, a number of key 'second-wave' ecocritics, and the best up-and-coming scholars. Topics covered include: Green Shakespeare-the Bard's subversive uses of the pastoral; John Clare's sacred relationship with the land; Thoreau's profound political passion; the natural landscape as symbol of postcolonial resistance in works by Lessing, Naipaul, and Coetzee; the relation between feminism and environmentalism; language and the concept of biosemiotics; and concerns over pollution and toxicity in films like
Erin Brockovitch,
Michael Clayton, and Al Gore's
An Inconvenient Truth.
List of contents
- Preface - Cheryll Glotfelty
- Part I - History
- 1. Chapter 1 - Being Green in Late Medieval English Literature - Gillian Rudd
- 2. Chapter 2 - Shadows of the Renaissance - Robert N. Watson
- 3. Chapter 3 - Romanticism and Ecocriticism - Kate Rigby
- 4. Chapter 4 - Cholera, Kipling and Tropical India - Pablo Mukherjee
- 5. Chapter 5 - Ecocriticism and Modernism - Anne Raine
- 6. Chapter 6 - Pataphysics and Postmodern Ecocriticism: A Prospectus - Adam Dickinson
- Part II - Theory
- 7. Chapter 7 - Ecocriticism and the Politics of Representation - Cheryl Lousley
- 8. Chapter 8 - Phenomenology - Timothy Clark
- 9. Chapter 9 - W. E. B. Du Bois at the Grand Canyon: Nature, History, and Race in Darkwater - John Claborn
- 10. Chapter 10 - Feminist Science Studies and Ecocriticism: Aesthetics and Entanglement in the Deep Sea - Stacy Alaimo
- 11. Chapter 11 - Deconstruction and/as Ecology - Timothy Morton
- 12. Chapter 12 - Queer Life? Ecocriticism After the Fire - Catriona Sandilands
- 13. Chapter 13 - Ecocriticism, Posthumanism, and the Biological Idea of Culture - Helena Feder
- 14. Chapter 14 - Postcolonialism - Elizabeth DeLoughrey
- 15. Chapter 15 - Extinctions: Chronicles of Vanishing Fauna in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Caribbean - Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
- 16. Chapter 16 - Cosmovisions: Environmental Justice, Transnational American Studies, and Indigenous Literature - Joni Adamson
- 17. Chapter 17 - Biosemiotic Criticism - Timo Maran
- 18. Chapter 18 - Ferality Tales - Greg Garrard
- 19. Chapter 19 - Mediating Climate Change: Ecocriticism, Science Studies, and The Hungry Tide -Adam Trexler
- Part III - Genre
- 20. Chapter 20 - Ecocritical approaches to literary form and genre: urgency, depth, provisionality, temporality - Richard Kerridge
- 21. Chapter 21 - Are You Serious? A Modest Proposal for Environmental Humor - Michael P. Branch
- 22. Chapter 22 - Is American Nature Writing Dead? - Daniel J. Philippon
- 23. Chapter 23 - Rethinking Eco-Film Studies - David Ingam
- 24. Chapter 24 - Green Banjo: The Ecoformalism of Old-Time Music - Scott Knickerbocker
- 25. Chapter 25 - Media Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Environments and Digital Life - Andrew McMurry
- 26. Chapter 26 - The Contemporary English Novel and its Challenges to Ecocriticism - Astrid Bracke
- 27. Chapter 27 - Environmental Writing for Children: A Selected Reconnaissance of Heritages, Emphases, Horizons - Lawrence Buell
- 28. Chapter 28 - "A Music Numerous as Space": Cognitive Environment and the House that Lyric Builds - Sharon Lattig
- 29. Chapter 29 - Talking About Climate Change: The Ecological Crisis and Narrative Form - Ursula Kluwick
- Part IV - Conclusion
- 30. Chapter 30 - Engaging with Prakriti: A Survey of Ecocritical Praxis in India - Swarnalatha Rangarajan
- 31. Chapter 31 - Chinese Ecocriticism in the Last Ten Years - Qingqi Wei
- 32. Chapter 32 - Ecocriticism in Japan - Yuki Masami
- 33. Chapter 33 - German Ecocriticism: An Overview - Axel Goodbody
- 34. Chapter 34 - Barrier Beach - Rob Nixon
About the author
Greg Garrard is the author of
Ecocriticism (Routledge 2004), as well as numerous essays and articles. Currently, he is FCCS Sustainability Professor at the University of British Columbia, a National Teaching Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy, and a founding member and former Chair of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.
Summary
The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism will provide a broad survey of the longstanding relationship between literature and the environment.
