Local natures, global responsibilities : : ecocritical perspectives on the new English literatures / / edited by Laurenz Volkmann [and others].

• Superior document: Cross/cultures, 121
• TeilnehmendeR: Volkmann, Laurenz
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam ;, New York : : Rodopi,, 2010.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Cross/Cultures 121/15.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xvii, 370 pages) :; illustrations.
• Notes: Papers from the 19th annual conference of the German Society for the Study of the New English Literatures (GNEL/ASNEL), held and Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, in May 2007.
• Other title: Preliminary Material --; Dialogism as a Solution for the Present Obstacles to an Ecological Culture /; Green Fields: Ecocriticism in South Africa /; Ecocriticism and a Non-Anthropocentric Humanism: Reflections on Local Natures and Global Responsibilities /; Utopian Ecology: Technology and Social Organization in Relation to Nature and Freedom /; Emplotting an Ecosystem: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and the Question of Form in Ecocriticism /; Refugees, Settlers, and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide /; Sea of Transformation: Re-Writing Australianness in the Light of Whaling /; Tracking the Tassie Tiger: Extinction and Ethics in Julia Leigh’s The Hunter /; Asset or Home?: Ecopolitical Ethics in Patricia Grace’s Potiki /; Imaginary Restraints: Michael Crummey’s River Thieves and the Beothuk of Newfoundland /; The Human and the Non-Human World in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller /; “Castaways in the Very Heart of the City”: Island and Metropolis in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe /; When Trees Become Kings: Nature as a Decolonizing Force in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness /; Towards a Postcolonial Environment?: Nature, ‘Native’, and Nation in Scottish Representations of the Oil Industry /; The Medium is ... the Monster?: Global Aftermathematics in Canadian Articulations of Frankenstein /; Reading as an Animal: Ecocriticism and Darwinism in Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan /; Faustian Dreams and Apocalypse in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake /; Science as Deconstruction of Natural Identity: Arthur Conan Doyle’s “When the World Screamed” and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake /; Ecocatastrophes in Recent American (Non-)Fictional Texts and Films /; Framing Disaster: Images of Nature, Media, and Representational Strategies in Hollywood Disaster Movies /; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace”: Climate, Culture, and Stereotypes /; Sex and the City?: Ecofeminism and the Urban Experience in Angela Carter, Anne Enright, and Bernardine Evaristo /; Travel as Transgression: Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom, J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K, and Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album /; Global Minds and Local Mentalities: ‘Topographies of Terror’ in Salman Rushdie’s Fury and Shalimar the Clown /; Notes on Contributors.
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references.
• ISBN: 9042028130
• ISSN: 0924-1426 ; 1385-2981
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: edited by Laurenz Volkmann [and others].

In the New Literatures in English, nature has long been a paramount issue: the environmental devastation caused by colonialism has left its legacy, with particularly disastrous consequences for the most vulnerable parts of the world. At the same time, social and cultural transformations have altered representations of nature in postcolonial cultures and literatures. It is this shift of emphasis towards the ecological that is addressed by this volume. A fast-expanding field, ecocriticism covers a wide range of theories and areas of interest, particularly the relationship between literature and other ‘texts’ and the environment. Rather than adopting a rigid agenda, the interpretations presented involve ecocritical perspectives that can be applied most fruitfully to literary and non-literary texts. Some are more general, ‘holistic’ approaches: literature and other cultural forms are a ‘living organism’, part of an intellectual ecosystem, implemented and sustained by the interactions between the natural world, both human and non-human, and its cultural representations. ‘Nature’ itself is a new interpretative category in line with other paradigms such as race, class, gender, and identity. A wide range of genres are covered, from novels or films in which nature features as the main topic or ‘protagonist’ to those with an ecocritical agenda, as in dystopian literature. Other concerns are: nature as a cultural construct; ‘gendered’ natures; and the city/country dichotomy. The texts treated challenge traditional Western dualisms (human/animal, man/nature, woman/man). While such global phenomena as media (‘old’ or ‘new’), tourism, and catastrophes permeate many of these texts, there is also a dual focus on nature as the inexplicable, elusive ‘Other’ and the need for human agency and global responsibility.