Category: 26.2 Ecocriticism

Bridging Opposites: An Ecocritical Approach to Mary Oliver’s Poetry This paper looks at the poetry of Mary Oliver from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that her poetry works to undo the dichotomous pair nature/self and the associated pairs: woman/man, body/soul. Most scholarship devoted to Oliver’s celebrated works has found it hard to categorize her production, and… Continue reading 26.2 | Mariana Rosa

Transversal Ecocritical Praxis– An Interview with Patrick Murphy Dr. Patrick D. Murphy is a Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He has authored Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies (2009), Farther Afield in the Study of Nature Oriented Literature (2000), A Place for Wayfaring: The Poetry… Continue reading 26.2 | Almudena Claassen, Jette van den Eijnden en Merlijn Geurts

Terror and Ecophobia The resurgence of terrorism and the increasing violence of our climate has ratcheted up the tone of urgency and crisis defining representations of nature: one of the results of this is that terror and ecophobia often define twenty-first-century representations of nature. Estok argues that media and academic conflations of devastating natural events… Continue reading 26.2 | Simon C. Estok

“Earthly Things”: Ecocriticism, Globalization, and the Material Turn This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and the environmental umanities today. Most of these, which are responding to environmental destruction and climate change, are characterized by an affinity with posthumanism and/or materialism (e.g. Alaimo, Colebrook, Morton), often in the… Continue reading 26.2 | Isabel Hoving

Material Ecocriticism and the Creativity of Storied Matter Situated in the conceptual horizons of the new materialist paradigm, material ecocriticism views matter in terms of its agentic expressions, inherent creativity, performative enactments and innate meanings. It asks us to rethink the questions of agency, creativity, imagination, and narrativity. Taking into account material-discursive practices (Karen Barad)… Continue reading 26.2 | Serpil Opperman

Writing Phytophilia: Philosophers and Poets as Lovers of Plants This essay considers the effects of phytophilia (the love of plants) in philosophy and in literature through an analysis of texts by French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros. In his relation to vegetal beings, the phytophile philosopher grapples with something as… Continue reading 26.2 | Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira

Murder in Arcadia: Towards a Pastoral of Responsibility in Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins Murder Mystery Series Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins murder mystery series look to the ‘golden age’ of detective fiction to create then undo the pastoral upon which that form heavily relied. This paper examines how such a strategy might be termed post-pastoral in… Continue reading 26.2 | Kym Martindale

Wastelands, Shrubs and Parks: Ecocriticism and the Challenge of the Urban Despite its development in recent years, ecocriticism has yet to meet the challenge of urban nature. This article presents an interdisciplinary ecocriticism that draws on urban studies to enable the study of urban nature in Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs (2010) and Edgelands (2011)… Continue reading 26.2 | Astrid Bracke