Anthropocene Reading

Literary History in Geologic Times

Tobias Menely, Jesse Oak Taylor (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

272 Seiten

2017
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
9780271078724 (ISBN)

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Considers the implications of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch in which a human “signature” appears in the lithostratigraphic record, for literary history and critical method. Explores the status of reading in the history of geology, and of geohistory in literature.

Few terms have garnered more attention recently in the sciences, humanities, and public sphere than the Anthropocene, the proposed epoch in which a human “signature” appears in the lithostratigraphic record. Anthropocene Reading considers the implications of this concept for literary history and critical method.

Entering into conversation with geologists and geographers, this volume reinterprets the cultural past in relation to the anthropogenic transformation of the Earth system while showcasing how literary analysis may help us conceptualize this geohistorical event. The contributors examine how a range of literary texts, from The Tempest to contemporary dystopian novels to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, mediate the convergence of the social institutions, energy regimes, and planetary systems that support the reproduction of life. They explore the long-standing dialogue between imaginative literature and the earth sciences and show how scientists, novelists, and poets represent intersections of geological and human timescales, the deep past and a posthuman future, political exigency and the carbon cycle.

Accessibly written and representing a range of methodological perspectives, the essays in this volume consider what it means to read literary history in the Anthropocene.

Contributors include Juliana Chow, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Thomas H. Ford, Anne-Lise François, Noah Heringman, Matt Hooley, Stephanie LeMenager, Dana Luciano, Steve Mentz, Benjamin Morgan, Justin Neuman, Jennifer Wenzel, and Derek Woods.

Tobias Menely is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and the author of The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice. Jesse Oak Taylor is Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle and the author of The Sky of Our Manufacture: The London Fog in British Fiction from Dickens to Woolf.

Contents

Introduction - Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor

1Anarky - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

2Enter Anthropocene, Circa 1610 - Steve Mentz

3The Anthropocene Reads Buffon; or, Reading Like Geology - Noah Heringman

4Punctuating History Circa 1800: The Air of Jane Eyre - Thomas H. Ford

5Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock’s Speculative Ichnology - Dana Luciano

6Partial Readings: Thoreau’s Studies as Natural History’s Casualties - Juliana Chow

7Scale as Form: Thomas Hardy’s Rocks and Stars - Benjamin Morgan

8Anthropocene Interruptions: Energy Recognition Scenes and the Myth of Global Cooling - Justin Neuman

9Stratigraphy and Empire: Waiting for the Barbarians, Reading Under Duress - Jennifer Wenzel

10Reading Vulnerably: Indigeneity and the Scale of Harm - Matt Hooley

11Accelerated Reading: Fossil Fuels, Infowhelm, and Archival Life - Derek Woods

12Climate Change and the Struggle for Genre - Stephanie LeMenager

13Ungiving Time: Reading Lyric by the Light of the Anthropocene - Anne-Lise François

List of Contributors

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	29.01.2018
Reihe/Serie	AnthropoScene
Zusatzinfo	3 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	University Park
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	567 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
ISBN-13	9780271078724 / 9780271078724
Zustand	Neuware