Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies: Fences, Boundaries, and Fields

Description

In Ecocritical Explorations, Patrick D. Murphy explores environmental literature and environmental cultural issues through both theoretical and applied criticism. He engages with the concepts of referentiality, simplicity, the nation state, and virtual reality in the first section of the book, and then goes on to interrogate these issues in contemporary environmental literature, both American and international. He concludes his argument with a discussion of the larger frames of family dynamics and un-natural disasters, such as hurricanes and global warming, ending with a chapter on the integra.  Read more... The four elements and the recovery of referentiality in ecocriticism -- The complexity of simplicity -- Difference and responsibility in literary alternatives to the nation-state -- Paradise or a pair of dice : contradictions and contingencies in real and virtual terrains for tomorrow's college students -- Toward transnational ecocritical theory : the example of Hwa Yol Jung -- Nature in the contemporary American novel -- The non-alibi of alien scapes : science fiction and ecocriticism -- The non-alibi of pragmatic utopianism and wild variability, or, Optimistic variations on a science fiction theme -- Mysteries of nature and environmental justice -- Nature-nurturing fathers in a world beyond our control -- Scenarios of disaster : crying wolf, scaring away the elephants, and heading 'em off at the pass -- Hurricanes and hubris : American responses in literature and culture to natural weather extremes and their human-driven intensifications -- Randing widely in the classroom.