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'Writing Nature in Cold War American Literature redraws ecocritical thinking. The atomic age, it argues, changed ways of seeing "Nature". Throughout, Daw weaves delicate, though challenging, analyses of how "ecological thought" is at play across a number of Cold War American writers not usually discussed by ecocritics.'
Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
First book-length ecocritical study of Cold War American literature
Compelling analyses of the function and representation of Nature in a wide range of Cold War fiction and poetry by authors including Paul Bowles, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Mary McCarthy reveal the prevalence of portrayals of Nature as an infinite, interdependent system in American literature written between 1945 and 1971.
Sarah Daw astutely highlights the Cold War's often overlooked role in environmental history, arguing that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) can be considered as part of a trend of increasingly ecological depictions of Nature in literature written after 1945. By exploring the most recent developments in the field of ecocriticism, the book is embedded within current ecocritical debates concerning the Anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change.
Sarah Daw is Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Bristol.
Cover image: view of Earth taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft © akg/Stocktrek Images
Cover design:
[EUP logo]
edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-3002-9 [PPC]
ISBN 978-1-4744-3003-6 [cover]
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List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Ecocriticism and the Mid-Twentieth Century
Chapter 1. Attaining
fana in Paul Bowles's Infinite Landscapes
Chapter 2. Nature and the Nuclear Southwest: Peggy Pond Church and J. Robert Oppenheimer
Chapter 3. The Influence of Chinese and Japanese Literature on J. D. Salinger's Philosophy of Nature
Chapter 4. The Beat Ecologies of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
Chapter 5. Bifurcated Nature in Mary McCarthy's
Birds of America Conclusion: 'Know that the Earth will Madonna the Bomb'
Index
About the author
Sarah Daw is currently Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the Department of English at University of Bristol. She has a chapter, 'The "dark ecology" of the Bomb: Writing the Nuclear as a part of "Nature" in Cold War American Literature' in
Dark Nature: Anti-Pastoral Essays in American Literature and Culture, ed. Richard J. Schneider (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice.
Summary
Compelling analyses of the function and representation of Nature in a wide range of Cold War fiction and poetry.
