Free US delivery on orders $35 or over

Quantity
In stock
$48.59 RRP $53.99 Website price saving $5.40 (10%)

This product is usually dispatched within 3 days

Description

Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolitical development that has led to the current environmental crisis, many ecocritical projects have avoided historicizing their concepts or have been characterized by approaches that were either pre-historic or post-historic: while the environmental movement has harbored the dream of restoring nature to a state untouched by human hands, there is also the pessimistic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, exhausted by humanity’s consumption of natural resources. Against this background, the decline of nature has become a narrative template quite common among the public environmental discourse and environmental scientists alike. The volume revisits Antiquity as an epoch which witnessed similar environmental problems and came up with its own interpretations and solutions in dealing with them. This decidedly historical perspective is not only supposed to fill in a blank in ecocritical discourse, but also to question, problematize, and inform our contemporary debates with a completely different take on “nature” and humanity’s place in the world. Thereby, a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition is established that highlights similarities as well as differences. This volume is the first book to bring ecocriticism and the classical tradition into a comprehensive dialogue. It assembles recognized experts in the field and advanced scholars as well as young and aspiring ecocritics. In order to ensure a dialogic exchange between the contributions, the volume includes four response essays by established ecocritics which embed the sections within a larger theoretical and practical ecocritical framework and discuss the potential of including the pre-modern world into our environmental debates.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Before Nature?, Brooke Holmes
Abbreviations
Introduction, Christopher Schliephake

Part I: Environmental (Hi)stories: Negotiating Human-Nature Interactions
(1) Environmental Mosaics Natural and Imposed, J. Donald Hughes
(2) Poseidon's Wrath and the End of Helike: Notions about the Anthropogenic Character of Disasters in Antiquity, Justine Walter
(3) Glades of Dread: The Ecology and Aesthetics of loca horrida, Aneta Kliszcz and Joanna Komorowska
(4) Response: Hailed by the Genius of Ruins – Antiquity, the Anthropocene, and the Environmental Humanities, Hannes Bergthaller

Part II: Close Readings: Literary Ecologies and the More-than-Human World
(5) Eroticized Environments: Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy and the Roots of Erotic Ecocritical Contemplation, Thomas Sharkie and Marguerite Johnson
(6) Interspecies Ethics and Collaborative Survival in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Richard Hutchins
(7) The Ecological Highway: Environmental Ekphrasis in St

Product details

Published Sep 15 2018
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 390
ISBN 9781498532860
Imprint Lexington Books
Illustrations 1 b/w illustrations; 1 b/w photos; 1 tables;
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series Ecocritical Theory and Practice
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

Related Titles

Environment: Staging