The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment

by Timothy Clark

Overview

Environmental criticism is a relatively new discipline that brings the global problem of environmental crisis to the forefront of literary and cultural studies. This introduction defines what eco-criticism is and provides a set of conceptual tools to encourage students to look at the texts they're reading in a new way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521720908
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2011
Series:	Cambridge Introductions to Literature
Pages:	267
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Timothy Clark is Professor of English at Durham University.

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction: the challenge; Part I. Romantic and Anti-Romantic: 1. Old World Romanticism; 2. New World Romanticism; 3. Genre and the ethics of nonfiction; 4. Language beyond the human?; 5. The inherent violence of Western thought?; 6. Posthumanism and the 'end of nature'; Part II. The Boundaries of the Political: 7. Thinking like a mountain?; 8. Environmental justice and the move 'beyond nature writing'; 9. European eco-justice; 10. Liberalism and Green moralism; 11. Ecofeminism; 12. 'Postcolonial' eco-justice; 13. Questions of scale: the local, the national and the global; Part III. Science and the Struggle for Intellectual Authority: 14. Science and the crisis of authority; 15. Science studies; 16. Evolutionary theories of literature; 17. Interdisciplinarity and science: two essays on human evolution; Part IV. The Animal Mirror: 18. Ethics and the nonhuman animal; 19. Anthropomorphism; 20. The future of ecocriticism; Further reading; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book offers an explanatory overview of ecocentric literary and cultural criticism and serves as an introduction to the concepts, methods, and arguments of ecocriticism."
-Scott Slovic,Isle of Oxford Journals

Editorial Reviews

"This book offers an explanatory overview of ecocentric literary and cultural criticism and serves as an introduction to the concepts, methods, and arguments of ecocriticism."
-Scott Slovic,Isle of Oxford Journals

"In this superb book, Timothy Clark has achieved what the best introductions for students achieve: brief, accurate and readable summaries of the main positions in a field, combined with a series of provocative and stimulating questions to be explored in class. Clark has done this and more - he has written a book that any ecocritic should read, since as well as setting out the central dilemmas with a rare clarity and sharpness, it asks searching questions that challenge some of ecocriticism's most established positions."
-Richard Kerridge, Green Letters

"Far from a pedestrian college textbook, Clark’s Introduction to Literature and the Environment is an erudite survey of ecocriticsm accessible to both scholar and student, as well as a practical tool for demonstrating literature’s representation of and engagement with environmental issues of all kinds … I can think of no better intellectual map of ecocriticism’s present state or future prospects than this book."
Modern Philology

From the Publisher