A global history of literature and the environment

Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Major Works Discussed
	I. Beginnings
		Australasia
		Mesopotamia
		Egypt
		China
		Japan
		India
		Greece
		Rome
		Land of Israel/Judea
		Mesoamerica
		Arabia
	II. The Development of Humanism and the Industrial Age
		Iceland
		Medieval and Early Modern Britain
		Enlightenment and Eighteenth-Century Europe
		Nineteenth-Century Europe
		Nineteenth-Century North America
		Nineteenth-Century Australasia
	III. The Anthropocene
		Australasia
		North America
		Europe
		China
		Japan
		Caribbean
		West Africa
		India
		Brazil
Introduction
	Human History in Environmental History/The Long Life of the Earth and Recent Appearance of Modern Humans
	The Shadow of the Anthropocene
	Literature and Environment
	Foundation, Shape, and Structure of the Book
	Organisation of Chapters
	Beginnings
	The Development of Humanism and the Industrial Age
	The Anthropocene
	Notes
Part I Beginnings
	Chapter 1 The Natural World in Ancient Mesopotamian Literature
		Notes
	Chapter 2 Environments of Early Chinese and Japanese Literatures
		Notes
	Chapter 3 The Garden of Eden in the Hebrew Bible
		Notes
	Chapter 4 Ecopoetics and the Literature of Ancient India
		An Inclusive Vision and Organic Worldview
		The Literature of Early India
		Upanishads - Structure and Texture
		The Metaphysical Democracy
		Upanishads: Dimensions of the Sacred and Cosmic
		Upanishads: Toward an Aesthesis of Disownment
		By Way of a Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 5 Ancient Greek Literature and the Environment:A Case Study with Pindar’s Olympian 7
		Notes
	Chapter 6 ‘‘Who Shall be a Sustainer?’’: Maize and Human Mediation in the Maya Popol Vuh
		Notes
	Chapter 7 I Invoke God, Therefore I Am: Creation’s Spirituality and Its Ecologic Impact in Islamic Texts
		Monotheism, Nature Religions, and the Environment
		Theoretical Debate on Monotheistic Environmental Ethics
		The Shade of Pantheism
		Stewardship
		Nature’s Goodness and Creaturely Status
		Creation’s Devotion to God
		Ecological Impact
			Kinship and Admiration
			Concrete Impact
		Conclusion
		Notes
Part II The Development of Humanism and the Industrial Age
	Chapter 8 ‘Viking’ Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory
		Introduction
		Settlement and Society
		Environment and Climate
		Economy and Climate Impacts
		The Climate of Iceland in Medieval Times
		Early Historiography and the Development of Saga Literature in Iceland
		The Sagas of Icelanders
		The Sturlunga Sagas
		The Bishops’ Sagas
		Summary
		The Legacy of the Icelandic Sagas
		Notes
	Chapter 9 Human Responses to the Environment in Medieval Literature
		Njál’s Saga
		Piers Plowman
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 10 Remaking Eighteenth-Century Ecologies: Arboreal Mobility
		Figuring Arboreal Mobility
		Globalizing Timber: Timber Famines, Traveling Botanists, and Acclimatization
		André Michaux’s Transatlantic Logs
		Anonymous Mobility: the Illegal Timber Market
		Notes
	Chapter 11 Romantic Ecology, Aboriginal Culture, and the Ideology of Improvement in British Atlantic Literature
		Notes
	Chapter 12 Natural History in the Anthropocene
		Notes
	Chapter 13 Bleak House, Liquid City: Climate to Climax in Dickens
		1
		2
		3
		4
		5
		6
		Notes
	Chapter 14 Fantastic Metabolisms: A Materialist Approach to Modern Eco-Speculative Fiction
		Origins
		‘Golden Age’ Science Fiction
		‘New Wave’ Science Fiction
		Conclusion
		Notes
Part III The Anthropocene
	Chapter 15 Climate and Culture in Australia and New Zealand
		‘Australasia’
		Climate Change and Extinction
		Climate and Colonization
		Nationalizing Climate Tropes: Burning and Felling the Landscape
		Demonizing, and Re-valuing the Land
		1970s: ‘Climate and Culture’ Eutrophication and the Anthropocene
		1980s: Social Darwinism in a Flooded Landscape
		1990s: Salt: Self as Prey in a Sterile Landscape
		‘‘Singing Up Country (Despite the Anthropocene)’’
		Aotearoa New Zealand: ‘‘We Oceanians’’?
		Foretellings
		Notes
	Chapter 16 Modern English Fiction
		Surveying the Field of Environmental Modernism
		Modern Pastoral Problems and Wild Alternatives
		Folded Flesh and Vibrant Matter: The Modern Self Embedded in a Dynamic Environment
		Green Stories and Ambiguous Endings
		Notes
	Chapter 17 Ecological Thought and Literature in Europe and Germany
		The Influence of Anglo-American on European Ecocriticism
		The Diversity of European Ecocriticism
		The Rhizomic Genealogy of European Ecological Thought
		The Influence of European Ecological Thought on Contemporary Ecocriticism
		The Contribution of German Literature and Philosophy to Ecological Thought
			The Proto-Ecological Dimension of Literature from Fairy Tales to Romanticism
			Confluences between Literature and Science
			German Ecocritical Theory and International Ecocriticism
				Phenomenology
				Frankfurt Critical Theory
				Ecological Extensions of Critical Theory: Gernot Böhme’s Aesthetics of Nature and Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society
				Cultural Ecology
				Environmental Issues in Recent German Literature
		Notes
	Chapter 18 From Birds and Trees to Texts: An Ecosemiotic Look at Estonian Nature Writing
		Introduction
		Ecosemiotic Framework
		Texts and Culture are Locally Situated
		The Umwelt Perspective Taken into Account
		Texts and Their Reception Form an Intertextual Ecosystem
		Case Study: In the Western Estonian Archipelago
		In the North-East Estonian Woodlands
		Discussion and Conclusions
		Notes
	Chapter 19 Contemporary British Poetry and the Environment
		Encounters
		Habitats
		Traces
		Perception
		Notes
	Chapter 20 Rescuing Nature from the Nation: Ecocritical (Un)Consciousness in Modern Chinese Culture
		Rescuing Nature from the Nation: How to Reimagine Time and Space
		The Field of Life and Death: Disability, Animality, and the Nationalist Subject
		Breathing under the Dome: The Essay and Documentary Film
		Conclusion: Cultural and Institutional Solutions to Environmental Crisis
		Notes
	Chapter 21 Eating Life at a Contaminated Table: The Narrative Significance of Toxic Meals in Contemporary Japan
		Notes
	Chapter 22 Commodity Frontiers, Caribbean Natures, and the Aesthetics of Ecological Revolution in Trinidadian Literature
		Modernization in Trinidad and the rise of Queen Cocoa
		‘Capitalism Gone Mad’: The 1970s Oil Boom
		Oil in the Blood: The Post-2000 Hydrocarbon Boom
		Notes
	Chapter 23 Petro-Violence and the Act of Bearing Witness in Contemporary Nigerian Literature
		Notes
	Chapter 24 Black Ants and Bones: Nehruvian Science and Third-World Environment in the Fiction of Satyajit Ray
		Other Worlds
		Peripheral Modernism
		Third-World Utopias
		Nehruvian Techno-science
		Provincials in Space
		Science, Fiction, Environment
		Notes
	Chapter 25 Brazilian Women Poets on Gender, Nature, and the Body
		Introduction
		Gilka Machado
		Arriete Vilela
		Conceição Evaristo
		Helena Parente Cunha
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 26 Can Environmental Imagination Save the World?
		Imagination vs Will
		Crises of Environmental Memory
		Concluding Thoughts
		Notes
Further Readings
	General Sources: Environmental Impact, Climate Change, the Anthropocene
	Part I: Beginnings
		Histories
		Theories
		Texts and Authors
	Part II: The Development of Humanism and the Industrial Age
		Histories
		Theories
		Texts and Authors
	Part III: The Anthropocene
		Histories
		Theories
		Texts and Authors
Index