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"From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment."--Publisher's website.
List of contents
Introduction: Culture, climate, capital, and contagion Malcolm Sen; 1. Landscape and literature in medieval Ireland Amy C. Mulligan; 2. The gaelic annals and climate, 431-1649 CE Francis Ludlow and Conor Kostick; 3. The environmental vocabulary of Irish folklore Bairbre Ní Fhloinn; 4. Arboreal landscapes and the construction of Ireland Anna Pilz; 5. Famine and ecology, 1750-1900 Margaret Kelleher; 6. Political ecology in nationalist literature, 1880-1922 Justin Dolan Stover; 7. Solastalgic modernism and the West in Irish literature (1900-1950) Katherine O'Callaghan; 8. The ecology of the Irish big house (1900-1950) Kelly Sullivan; 9. Refuge and domestic space in northern Irish poetry (c1940 to the present) Adam Hanna; 10. Irish travellers, the environment, and literature Mary Burke; 11. The oceanic imaginaries of modern Irish writing John Brannigan; 12. Landscape in Irish language literature: poetry and prose (1900-2000) Louis De Paor; 13. Poetry and place Eric Falci; 14. Animals and climate crisis in Irish poetry Katherine Kirkpatrick; 15. Animals and animality in Irish fiction Maureen O'Connor; 16. The political ecology of food and hunger (1950-present) Miriam Mara; 17. Built environments and lived ecologies in contemporary Irish poetry, 1998-present Julia C. Obert and Nolan Goetzinger; 18. Transnationalism and environment in contemporary Irish literature Christine Cusick; 19. Energy futures in contemporary Irish fiction Sharae Deckard; 20. An ordinary crisis: SARS CoV-2 and Irish studies Malcolm Sen.
About the author
Malcolm Sen teaches in the Department of English at UMass Amherst. He is the author of Unnatural Disasters: Irish Literature, Climate Change and Sovereignty (2022). His research interests include the environmental humanities and postcolonial studies; he is especially interested in changing conceptions of sovereignty in the twenty-first century. Sen has published numerous articles and book chapters in these areas.
Summary
The book provides a comprehensive survey of Irish literature and its multi-faceted environmental themes. Lucid analyses of well-known and forgotten texts contextualize Irish literature in historical, political, and ecological frameworks. It shows how the humanities can engage in discourses of environmental degradation and the climate crisis.
