Cognitive Ecopoetics: A New Theory of Lyric

Description

This book arises at the confluence of three distinct tributaries: ecopoetics, cognitive poetics, and the theory of the lyric. Common to many advocates and practitioners of ecopoetry is the view that it might serve to negotiate a relationship with the physical world, nudging its makers and hearers alike into alignment with “nature,” the definition of which is then contested. The belief is not simply a Romantic holdover, or Jonathan Bate’s notion of the poem as a park in which we may “accommodate ourselves to a mode of dwelling that is not alienated” (10), for it is shared, for instance, by Olsonian poetics bent on undoing the subject. In fact, the aim of reconciliation with a physical reality reaches an extreme when it is framed as ecological: “For ecopoetics reflects yet another in a series of human decenterings, as from an ecological perspective, the self dissolves into the gene pool and the species into the ecosystem” (Reilly 257). Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Content Acknowledgments Introduction: The Region of the Song 1 Occasional Cries: Prelude to Lyric 2 Dwelling with the Possible: Lyric Obscurity and Embedded Perception 3 This Is “Where the Meanings Are”: Lyric Disjunction and Perceptual Shattering 4 Acts of the Mind: Lyric Action and the Whole of Perception Works Cited Index