Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Novel Ecologies
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-030-68606-2
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 215 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 306 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine

Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Novel Ecologies draws on energy concepts to revisit some of our favorite books—Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The War of the Worlds—and the ways these shape our sense of ourselves as ecological beings. Barri J. Gold regards the laws of thermodynamics not solely as a set of physical principles, but also as a cultural and conceptual form that we can use to reimagine our historically vexed relationship to the natural world. Beginning with an examination of the parallel inceptions of energy and ecology in the mid-nineteenth century, this book considers the question of how we may better read and interpret our world, developing a recipe for experimental reading and insisting upon the importance of literary studies in a world driving to ecological catastrophe.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gold, Barri J.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Denkansätze und Ideologie der Umweltschützer

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Experiments in Novel Ecologies.- 2. Austen’s Emergent Ecologies.- 3. “A Fundamentally Unheroic Kind of Story”: Jane Eyre, the liberal subject, and the problem of ecology.- 4. Energy, Evolution, Ecology.- 5. From the Marshes to the Garden: Toxicity and Closure in Great Expectations.- 6. Environmental Catastrophe, Provisional Disillusionment and The War of the Worlds.

Über Autor(innen)

Barri J. Gold is Professor and Chair of English at Muhlenberg College, USA, and author of ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science (2010).