8. Neither the ‘Simple Backward Look’ nor the ‘Simple Progressive Thrust’: Ecocriticism and the Politics of Prosperity

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Editors’ Preface V
3. Contents VII
4. 0. Introduction 1
5. Part I. Ecocritical Theories of Culture and Literature
6. 1. The Lightest Burden: The Aesthetic Abductions of Biosemiotics 19
7. 2. Earth’s Poesy: Romantic Poetics, Natural Philosophy, and Biosemiotics 45
8. 3. Merleau-Ponty and the Eco-Literary Imaginary 65
9. 4. Ecology and Immanence 84
10. 5. Paradox as Bedrock: Social Systems Theory and the Ungrounding of Literary Environmentalism in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire 105
11. 6. Aesthetics of Nature – A Philosophical Perspective 123
12. 7. Cultural Ecology of Literature – Literature as Cultural Ecology 135
13. Part II. Issues and Directions of Contemporary Ecocriticism
14. 8. Neither the ‘Simple Backward Look’ nor the ‘Simple Progressive Thrust’: Ecocriticism and the Politics of Prosperity 157
15. 9. Political Ecology: Nature, Democracy, and American Literary Culture 174
16. 10. Ecocriticism and Postcolonial Studies 194
17. 11. Ecofeminisms, the Toxic Body, and Linda Hogan’s Power 208
18. 12. Ecocriticism, Place Studies, and Colm Tóibín’s “A Long Winter”: A Biocultural Perspective 226
19. 13. Animal Studies: Kafka’s Animal Stories 249
20. 14. From Material to Posthuman Ecocriticism: Hybridity, Stories, Natures 273
21. 15. Conciliation and Consilience: Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour 295
22. Part III. Between the Local and the Global: Cultural Diversity vs. Eco-Cosmopolitanism
23. 16. Narrative Scholarship as an American Contribution to Global Ecocriticism 315
24. 17. Ecology and Life Writing in Transnational and Transcultural Perspective 334
25. 18. From Thomas Mann to Porto Marghera: Material Ecocriticism, Literary Interpretation, and Death in Venice 349
26. 19. Mediterranean Ecocriticism: The Sea in the Middle 368
27. 20. Eco- and Geo- Approaches in French and Francophone Literary Studies 385
28. 21. Latin American Environmental Discourses, Indigenous Ecological Consciousness and the Problem of ‘Authentic’ Native Identities 413
29. 22. Women Writing Nature in the Global South: New Forest Texts from Fractured Indian Forests 438
30. 23. Ecocultures and the African Literary Tradition 459
31. 24. Ecosophy and Ecoaesthetics: A Chinese Perspective 481
32. 25. World Risk Society and Ecoglobalism: Risk, Literature, and the Anthropocene 494
33. Part IV. Ecologies of Literary Communication
34. 26. Cultural Ecology and the Teaching of Literature 513
35. 27. Environmental Narrative, Embodiment, and Emotion 534
36. 28. Beyond the Wasteland: An Ecocritical Reading of Modernist Trauma Literature 551
37. 29. Literary Place and Cultural Memory 569
38. 30. The Ecology of Literary Chronotopes 590
39. 31. Cultural Ecology and Literary Translation 605
40. Part V. Genre and Media Ecologies
41. 32. PANORAMA: Three Ecocinematic Territories 621
42. 33. Ecomusicology from Poetic to Practical 644
43. 34. Within and Beyond the Art World: Environmentalist Criticism of Visual Art 664
44. Index of Subjects 683
45. Index of Names 701
46. List of Contributors 713