The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism

The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism provides a broad survey of the longstanding relationship between literature and the environment. The moment for such an offering is opportune in many respects: multiple environmental crises are increasingly inescapable at both transnational and local levels; the role of the humanities in addition to technology and politics is increasingly recognized as central for exploring and finding solutions; and the subject of ecocriticism has reached a kind of critical mass, both within its Anglo-American heartlands and beyond.

From its origins in the study of American Nature Writing and British Romanticism, ecocriticism has developed along numerous theoretical, historical, cultural and geographical axes, the most contemporary and exciting of which will be represented in the Handbook. The contributors include eminent founders of the field, including Cheryll Glotfelty and Jonathan Bate, a number of key "second-wave" ecocritics, and the best up-and-coming scholars. Topics covered include: Green Shakespeare-the Bard’s subversive uses of the pastoral; John Clare’s sacred relationship with the land; Thoreau’s profound political passion; the natural landscape as symbol of postcolonial resistance in works by Lessing, Naipaul, and Coetzee; the relation between feminism and environmentalism; language and the concept of biosemiotics; and concerns over pollution and toxicity in films like Erin Brockovitch, Michael Clayton and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Contents: Preface/Cheryll Glotfelty. Part I – History: 1. Being Green in Late Medieval English Literature/Gillian Rudd. 2. Shadows of the Renaissance/Robert N. Watson. 3. Romanticism and Ecocriticism/Kate Rigby. 4. Cholera, Kipling and Tropical India/Pablo Mukherjee. 5. Ecocriticism and Modernism/ Anne Raine. 6. Pataphysics and Postmodern Ecocriticism: A Prospectus/Adam Dickinson. Part II – Theory: 7. Ecocriticism and the Politics of Representation/Cheryl Lousley. 8. Phenomenology/Timothy Clark. 9. W. E. B. Du Bois at the Grand Canyon. Nature, History and Race in Darkwater/John Claborn. 10. Feminist Science Studies and Ecocriticism: Aesthetics and Entanglement in the Deep Sea/ Stacy Alaimo. 11. Deconstruction and/as Ecology/Timothy Morton. 12. Queer Life? Ecocriticism After the Fire/ Catriona Sandilands. 13. Ecocriticism, Posthumanism, and the Biological Idea of Culture/Helena Feder. 14. Postcolonialism/Elizabeth DeLoughrey. 15. Extinctions. Chronicles of Vanishing Fauna in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Caribbean/Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. 16. Cosmovisions. Environmental Justice, Transnational American Studies and Indigenous Literature/Joni Adamson. 17. Biosemiotic Criticism/Timo Maran. 18. Ferality Tales/Greg Garrard. 19. Mediating Climate Change. Ecocriticism, Science Studies and The Hungry Tide/Adam Trexler. Part III – Genre: 20. Ecocritical approaches to literary form and genre. urgency, depth, provisionality, temporality/Richard Kerridge. 21. Are You Serious? A Modest Proposal for Environmental Humor/Michael P. Branch. 22. Is American Nature Writing Dead?/ Daniel J. Philippon. 23. Rethinking Eco-Film Studies/David Ingam. 24. Green Banjo : The Ecoformalism of Old-Time Music/ Scott Knickerbocker. 25. Media Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Environments and Digital Life/Andrew McMurry. 26. The Contemporary English Novel and its Challenges to Ecocriticism/Astrid Bracke. 27. Environmental Writing for Children: A Selected Reconnaissance of Heritages, Emphases, Horizons/ Larence Buell. 28. "A Music Numerous as Space". Cognitive Environment and the House that Lyric Builds/Sharon Lattig. 29. Talking About Climate Change: The Ecological Crisis and Narrative Form/Ursula Kluwick. Part IV – Conclusion: 30. Engaging with Prakriti: A Survey of Ecocritical Praxis in India/Swarnalatha Rangarajan. 31. Chinese Ecocriticism in the Last Ten Years/Qingqi Wei. 32. Ecocriticism in Japan/Yuki Masami. 33. German Ecocriticism: An Overview/Axel Goodbody. 34. Barrier Beach/Rob Nixon.