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.

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.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Dialogism as a Solution for the Present Obstacles to an Ecological Culture / Vernon Gras -- Green Fields: Ecocriticism in South Africa / Derek Barker -- Ecocriticism and a Non-Anthropocentric Humanism: Reflections on Local Natures and Global Responsibilities / Serenella Iovino -- Utopian Ecology: Technology and Social Organization in Relation to Nature and Freedom / Alex Shishin -- Emplotting an Ecosystem: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and the Question of Form in Ecocriticism / Jens Martin Gurr -- Refugees, Settlers, and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide / Nishi Pulugurtha -- Sea of Transformation: Re-Writing Australianness in the Light of Whaling / Sissy Helff -- Tracking the Tassie Tiger: Extinction and Ethics in Julia Leigh’s The Hunter / Kylie Crane -- Asset or Home?: Ecopolitical Ethics in Patricia Grace’s Potiki / Claudia Duppé -- Imaginary Restraints: Michael Crummey’s River Thieves and the Beothuk of Newfoundland / Anke Uebel -- The Human and the Non-Human World in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller / Astrid Feldbrügge -- “Castaways in the Very Heart of the City”: Island and Metropolis in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe / Marion Fries–Dieckmann -- When Trees Become Kings: Nature as a Decolonizing Force in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness / Michael Mayer -- Towards a Postcolonial Environment?: Nature, ‘Native’, and Nation in Scottish Representations of the Oil Industry / Silke Stroh -- The Medium is ... the Monster?: Global Aftermathematics in Canadian Articulations of Frankenstein / Mark A. McCutcheon -- Reading as an Animal: Ecocriticism and Darwinism in Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan / Greg Garrard -- Faustian Dreams and Apocalypse in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake / Giuseppina Botta -- Science as Deconstruction of Natural Identity: Arthur Conan Doyle’s “When the World Screamed” and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake / Ingrid–Charlotte Wolter -- Ecocatastrophes in Recent American (Non-)Fictional Texts and Films / Nils Zumbansen and Marcel Fromme -- Framing Disaster: Images of Nature, Media, and Representational Strategies in Hollywood Disaster Movies / Nicole Schröder -- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace”: Climate, Culture, and Stereotypes / Sawako Taniyama -- Sex and the City?: Ecofeminism and the Urban Experience in Angela Carter, Anne Enright, and Bernardine Evaristo / Susanne Gruss -- 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 / Florian Niedlich -- Global Minds and Local Mentalities: ‘Topographies of Terror’ in Salman Rushdie’s Fury and Shalimar the Clown / Ines Detmers -- Notes on Contributors.