Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature

Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature
Author: Steven Petersheim
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2020-02-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498581188

A friend and associate of the Transcendentalists in Concord, Nathaniel Hawthorne has rarely been taken seriously as a writer interested in the natural world. This book seeks to redress this omission by elucidating the sense of environmentality that emanates from Hawthorne’s romances and other writings. Hawthorne’s sense of kinship with the natural world runs deep in his work, particularly when his fiction is examined alongside his voluminous notebooks. Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature also contributes to the growing scholarly work aiming to illuminate Hawthorne as a writer deeply engaged in the issues of his day, particularly involving the environment, rather than an author simply interested in reinterpreting colonial history. Today’s readers stand to gain a rich new understanding of Hawthorne by reassessing Hawthorne’s attitude toward the natural world.

Avenging Nature

Avenging Nature
Author: Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-09-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1793621454

“Nature, thou art my goddess”—Edmund’s bold assertion in King Lear could easily inspire and, at the same time, function as a lamentation of the inadequate respect of nature in culture. In this volume, international experts provide multidisciplinary exploration of the insubordinate representations of nature in modern and contemporary literature and art. The work foregrounds the need to reassess how nature is already, and has been for a while, striking back against human domination. From the perspective of literary studies, art, history, media studies, ethics and philosophy, and ethnology and anthropology, Avenging Nature highlights the need of assessing insurgent discourses that—converging with counter-discourses of race, gender or class—realize the empowerment of nature from its subaltern position. Acknowledging the argument that cultural representations of nature establish a relationship of domination and exploitation of human discourse over nonhuman reality and that, in consequence, our regard for nature as humanist critics is instrumental and anthropocentric, the present volume advocates for the view that the time has come to finally perceive nature’s vengeance and to critically probe into nature’s ongoing revenge against the exploitation of culture.

Nature and Literary Studies

Nature and Literary Studies
Author: Peter Remien
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 771
Release: 2022-08-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108877877

Nature and Literary Studies supplies a broad and accessible overview of one of the most important and contested keywords in modern literary studies. Drawing together the work of leading scholars of a variety of critical approaches, historical periods, and cultural traditions, the book examines nature's philosophical, theological, and scientific origins in literature, as well as how literary representations of this concept evolved in response to colonialism, industrialization, and new forms of scientific knowledge. Surveying nature's diverse applications in twenty-first-century literary studies and critical theory, the volume seeks to reconcile nature's ideological baggage with its fundamental role in fostering appreciation of nonhuman being and agency. Including chapters on wilderness, pastoral, gender studies, critical race theory, and digital literature, the book is a key resource for students and professors seeking to understand nature's role in the environmental humanities.

Environmental Postcolonialism

Environmental Postcolonialism
Author: Shubhanku Kochar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793634572

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Environmental Postcolonialism: A Literary Response is an academic investigation of the environmental repercussions of colonial destruction. This volume addresses the complex interplay between postcolonialism and environmental discourse through literature produced in the ex-colonies. This literature is read from the standpoint of ex-colonies within their human and non-human context. The primary objective of this volume is to scrutinize environmental concerns in the light of postcolonial theory, and so it examines works of art from the twin perspective of eco-criticism and postcolonialism which illuminates and underscores how colonizers destroyed and interfered with both nature and culture. Through discussing the intersecting layers of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism, the volume gestures to new directions and generates a hopeful vision of a decolonized world.

Dwellings of Enchantment

Dwellings of Enchantment
Author: Bénédicte Meillon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793631603

Dwellings of Enchantment: Writing and Reenchanting the Earth offers ecocritical and ecopoetic readings that focus on multispecies dwellings of enchantment and reenchant our rapport with the more-than-human world. It sheds light on the marvelous entanglements between humans and other life forms coexisting with us–entanglements that, when fully perceived, call onto humans to shift perspectives on both the causes and solutions to current ecological crises. Working against the disenchantment of humans’ relationships with and perceptions of the world entailed by a modern ontology, this book illustrates the power of ecopoetics to attune humans to the vibrant matter both within and outside of us. Braiding indigenous with non-indigenous worldviews, this book tackles ecopoetics emerging from varying locations in the world. It underscores the postmodernist, remythologizing processes going on in many ecopoetic texts, via magical realist modes and mythopoeia.

Lupenga Mphande

Lupenga Mphande
Author: Dike Okoro
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-04-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793637520

Dike Okoro analyzes the various manifestations of ecocriticism and political activism in the poetry of Lupenga Mphande, who is arguably Africa’s first poet to explore the existence of territorial cults and natural shrines. This book is recommended for students and scholars seeking new interpretations of the African experience in contemporary world literature.

Trees in Literatures and the Arts

Trees in Literatures and the Arts
Author: Carmen Concilio
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-04-21
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1793622809

Embracing the intersectional methodological outlook of the environmental humanities, the contributors to this edited collection explore the entanglements of cultures, ecologies, and socio-ethical issues in the roles of trees and their relationships with humans through narratives in literature and art.

Turkish Ecocriticism

Turkish Ecocriticism
Author: Sinan Akilli
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793637040

Turkish Ecocriticism: From Neolithic to Contemporary Timescapes explores the values, perceptions, and transformations of the environment, ecology, and nature in Turkish culture, literature, and the arts. Through these themes, it examines historical and contemporary environmentally engaged literary and cultural traditions in Turkey. The volume re-imagines Turkey in its geo-social and ecocultural narratives of multiple connections and complexities, in its multi-faceted webs of histories, and in its rich multispecies stories.

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature
Author: Jada Ach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2020-12-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793622027

In literary and cinematic representations, deserts often betoken collapse and dystopia. Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offers readings of literature set in the American Southwest from ecocritical and new materialist perspectives. This book explores the diverse epistemologies, histories, relationships, futures, and possibilities that emerge from the representation of American deserts in fiction, film, and literary art, and traces the social, cultural, economic, and biotic narratives that foreground deserts, prompting us to reconsider new, provocative modes of human/nonhuman engagement in arid ecogeographies.

Reading Cats and Dogs

Reading Cats and Dogs
Author: Françoise Besson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793611076

Throughout the world, people spend much of their time with animal companions of various kinds, frequently with cats and dogs. What meanings do we make of these relationships? In the ecocritical collection Reading cats and Dogs, a diverse array of scholars considers the philosophy, literature, and film devoted to human relationships with companion species. In addition to illuminating famous animal stories by Beatrix Potter, Jack London, Italo Svevo, and Michael Ondaatje, readers are introduced to the dog poems of Shuntarō Tanikawa, a Turkish documentary on stray cats as neighborhood companions, and the representation of diverse animal companions in Cameroonian novels. Focusing on “Stray and Feral Companions,” “The Usefulness of Companion Animals,” and “Problematizing Companion Animals,” Reading Cats and Dogs aims both to confirm and topple readers’ assumptions about the fellow travelers with whom we share our lives, our streets and fields, and our planet. Fifteen contributors from various countries reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and psychological complexities of our multispecies relationships, demonstrating the richness of ecocritical animal studies.