Transcultural Ecocriticism: Global, Romantic and Decolonial Perspectives

by Stuart Cooke (Editor), Peter Denney (Editor)

Overview

Bringing together decolonial, Romantic and global literature perspectives, Transcultural Ecocriticism explores innovative new directions for the field of environmental literary studies. By examining these literatures across a range of geographical locations and historical periods - from Romantic period travel writing to Chinese science fiction and Aboriginal Australian poetry - the book makes a compelling case for the need for ecocriticism to competently translate between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, planetary and local, and contemporary and pre-modern perspectives. Leading scholars from Australasia and North America explore links between Indigenous knowledges, Romanticism, globalisation, avant-garde poetics and critical theory in order to chart tensions as well as affinities between these discourses in a variety of genres of environmental representation, including science fiction, poetry, colonial natural history and oral narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350213821
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/25/2022
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Stuart Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Griffith University, Australia.

Peter Denney is Senior Lecturer in History at Griffith University, Australia.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
Thinking about Transcultural Ecocriticism: Space, Scale and Translation
Stuart Cooke and Peter Denney

PART A: Planetary Localities

Chapter 2
Urban Narrative and Climate Change
Ursula K. Heise

Chapter 3
Scaling Down Our Imagination of the Human: Ted Chiang and the Fable of Extinction
Chris Danta

Chapter 4
'Re-enchanting the world' from Mozambique: the African Anthropocene and Mia Couto's poetics of the planet
Meg Samuelson

Chapter 5
Ecological Imaginations in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction
Mengtian Sun

PART B: Beyond the Romantic Frontier

Chapter 6
The Colonial Translation of Natures
Alan Bewell

Chapter 7
Sensing Empire: Travel Writing, Picturesque Taste and British Perceptions of the Indian Sensory Environment
Peter Denney

Chapter 8
The Dark Side of Romantic Dendrophilia
Ve-Yin Tee

Chapter 9
Shaping Selves and Spaces: Romanticism, Botany and South-West Western Australia
Jessica White

PART C: Decolonial Poetics

Chapter 10
Transcultural Ecopoetics and Decoloniality in meenamatta lena puellakanny: Meenamatta Water Country Discussion
Peter Minter

Chapter 11
Theorising Decolonised Literary Environments
Stephen Muecke

Chapter 12
Placing Invisible Women: Environment, Space and Power in Two Works by Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim
Maia Gunn Watkinson

Chapter 13
Geoterritorial Island Poetics, or Transcultural Composition with a Wetland in Southern Chile
Stuart Cooke, with Juan Paulo Huirimilla Oyarzo

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Containing essays predominantly by Australians but including scholarship from around the Pacific Rim and beyond, Transcultural Ecocriticism illuminates the environmental dimensions of literary works from Vietnam, Mozambique, China, the U.S., Chile, Britain, and India, as well as Australia, with generous representation of Indigenous cultures. The genres considered are also diverse, as the authors examine the resources for environmentalism and environmental justice of fables, fantasy, science fiction, oral traditions, travel writing, novels, and poems. The thinking here is indeed transcultural, linking carefully situated knowledges to one another as well as to global concerns and planetary responsibilities. Such bringing together of localized particularities with large-scale thinking about global crises, deep time, and planetary space is precisely what's needed in the environmental humanities now. A section of essays on Romanticism valuably highlights intersections of Romantic thinking about nature with colonial oppression, while another cluster of essays explores recent decolonial projects. Several of these present groundbreaking transcultural collaborations between Anglo-Australian and Indigenous (Aboriginal, Mapuche) artists. These exciting projects demonstrate the transformative and liberatory potential of opening to the eco-philosophies of other cultures. As readers of this important collection are introduced to works and traditions of literature they had not previously known, they will gain appreciation for the powerful resources offered by transcultural ecocriticism, especially those in which Indigenous onto-ecologies are at play, for responding, as Peter Minter observes, "to climate change and, among other things, its liability to regimes of coloniality."" --Lynn Keller, Emerita Professor of English and Martha Meier Renk Bascom Professor of Poetry Emerita University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

From the Publisher