The Environmental Tradition in English Literature

Drawing upon the English literary tradition for new perspectives and paradigms, this collection presents a broad range of theoretical and historical approaches to ecocriticism. The first section of the volume offers different theoretical frameworks for ecocritical work, encompassing a range of socio-political, post-modern and multi-disciplinary approaches. In the second section, contributors explore the ways in which ecocriticism allows us to re-think literary history.

Contents: Introduction, Louise Westling; Part 1: Theoretical approaches: After ’Organic Community’: ecocriticism, nature and human nature, Martin Ryle; Beyond 2000: Raymond Williams and the Ecocritic’s Task, Dominic Head; Ecofeminism in literary studies, Naomi Guttman; Towards a post-pastoral view of British poetry, Terry Gifford; Post-modern ecocriticism in the science fiction novel: J.G. Ballard and Ken Kesey, Bennett Huffman; Cosmos as metaphor: Eco-spiritual poetics, Paul Davies; Narratives of Resignation: Environmentalism in recent fiction, Richard Kerridge; Ecotopian fiction and the sustainable society, Lisa Garforth; Part 2: Historical approaches: Making the rocks disappear: refocusing Chaucer’s Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales, Gillian Rudd; The Commodious Ark: Nature’s voice in early modern poetry, Diane McColley; ’Founded on the affections’: a romantic ecology, Ralph Pite; Was there a Victorian ecology?, John Parham; Letting in the Sky: An Ecofeminist reading of Virginia Woolf’s short fiction, Charlotte Zoë Walker; Reversing the fall: the sense of place in D.H. Lawrence, Gavin Murray; Twentieth-century rural poets of Britain and Ireland: ecological voices from the geographical and cultural margins, Andy Jurgis; Ecocriticism: An annotated bibliography, Jo Rawlinson. Index.

John Parham