Nature in literary and cultural studies : : transatlantic conversations on ecocriticism / / edited by Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer.

• Superior document: Nature, culture and literature ; 03
• TeilnehmendeR: Gersdorf, Catrin.; Mayer, Sylvia.
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Nature, culture and literature ; 3.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (491 p.)
• Notes: " ... extended versions of a selection of papers given at a conference at the University of Munster (Germany) in March 2004"--P. 13.

Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies is a collection of essays written by European and North American scholars who argue that nature and culture can no longer be thought of in oppositional, mutually exclusive terms. They are united in an effort to push the theoretical limits of ecocriticism towards a more rigorous investigation of nature's critical potential as a concept that challenges modern culture's philosophical assumptions, epistemological convictions, aesthetic principles, and ethical imperatives. This volume offers scholars and students of literature, culture, history, philosophy, and linguistics new insights into the ongoing transformation of ecocriticism into an innovative force in international and interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Catrin GERSDORF and Sylvia MAYER: Nature in literary and cultural studies: defining the subject of ecocriticism - an introduction -- Theorizing the nature of ecocriticism -- Louise WESTLING: Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman -- Hubert ZAPF: The state of ecocriticism and the function of literature as cultural ecology -- Christa GREWE-VOLPP: Nature "out there" and as "a social player": some basic consequences for a literary ecocritical analysis -- Simone Birgitt HARTMANN: Feminist and postcolonial perspectives on ecocriticism in a Canadian context: toward a 'situated' literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice -- Sylvia MAYER: Literary studies, ecofeminism and environmentalist knowledge production in the humanities -- Locating nature in language, literature, and everday culture -- Beatrix BUSSE: (Historical) ecolinguistics and literary analysis -- Hannes BERGTHALLER: "Trees are what everyone needs:" The Lorax , anthropocentrism, and the problem of mimesis -- Ursula K. HEISE: Afterglow: Chernobyl and the everyday -- Christine GERHARDT: "Syllabled to us for names": Native American echoes in Walt Whitman's green poetics -- Tonia L. PAYNE: "We are dirt: we are earth": Ursula Le Guin and the problem of extraterrestrialism -- Christian Krug: Virtual tourism: the consumption of natural and digital environments -- Andrew A. LISTON: Gertrud Leutenegger's metanoic narrative Kontinent -- Nature, literature and the space of the national -- Irena RAGAIŠIENĖ: Nature/place, memory, and identity in the poetry of Lithuanian émigré Danutė Paškevičiūtė -- Colin RIORDAN: German literature, nature and modernity before 1914 -- Caroline DELPH: Nature and nationalism in the writings of Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860) -- Simon MEACHER: It was shown in the way they stepped in the woods: nature in Hermann Löns and Edward Thomas -- Katharine GRIFFITHS: The aesthetic appreciation of nature as a reaction to dictatorship: disjunction and dissidence in the Inner Emigration -- Axel GOODBODY: From egocentrism to ecocentrism: nature and morality in German writing in the 1980s -- Ethics of nature -- Patrick D. MURPHY: Grounding anotherness and answerability through allonational ecoliterature formations -- Thomas CLAVIEZ: Ecology as moral stand(s): environmental ethics, Western moral philosophy, and the problem of the Other -- Timo MARAN: Where do your borders lie? Reflections on the semiotical ethics of nature -- Notes on contributors -- Index.