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Transcript of New & Other Directions Literature and Nature University of Helsinki/ Comparative Literature...
New & Other Directions
Literature and NatureUniversity of Helsinki/ Comparative Literature 25.11.2014
Apocalypse, End of TimeBook of Revelation
Greek; Apokálypsis; literally ”lifting of the veil"
Enviromental Imagination and Apocalypticism
• Thomas Malthus => Population growth and limited resources • Paul Erlich: The
Population Bomb (1972)• Deep Ecology• From Judeo-Christian
to secular context
In contemporary fiction and culture • Buell (1995) ”[…] in
the era of Cat’s Cradle, Dr. Strangelove, and Star Wars it is hard for apocalypticism to keep a straight face”• Don De Lillo: White
Noise (1984)• Margaret Atwood:
Oryx and Crake (2003)
Criticism?• Malthus’s theory not
scientifically valid• Media uses
environmental catastrophes as narratives for its own ends• Leads to dogmatic
thinking, ”ecofascism”?
• Locus Classicus; Joseph Conrad The Heart of Darkness• Edgar Allan Poe:
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym• J. M. Coetzee: Life of
Michael K.• Yan Martel: Life of Pi
Postcolonialism and Ecocriticism – Texts and Study
Feminism and Ecology – Carolyn Merchant (s.1936)
• The Death of Nature (1980) => From Renaissance ”female earth” and holistic cosmology to Scientific Revolution• Reinventing Eden (2003)
=> Judeo-Christian tradition has seen nature as female=> Narratives structure our view of nature
WILLIAM FAULKNERModernism and Nature
”The Bear”; Go Down Moses (1942)
• A collection of short stories or a novel?• ”The Bear” –
Protagonist Isaac ”Ike” McCaslin• Hunting and ritual –
”Old Ben”• Vanishing wilderness –
Plantation economy and deforestation
• (Evans 1999; Palmer 2002)
Other themes in Faulkner • Topography, sense of
place• Legacy of slavery, blood
inheritence (Light In August; Go Down Moses etc)• Sexuality, woman’s
position in the South (The Wild Palms; Absalom, Absalom; The Hamlet)
• (Faulkner and the Natural World, University Press of Mississippi 1999)
Postmodernism – Margaret Atwood
• Surfacing (1971), on surface a Bildunsroman of a young woman• The impossibility of
depicting nature• A fish or ”the idea of
a fish”?• (Blomberg & Säntti 2008)
New directions for study and research
• Science fiction, fantasy, utopias and dystopias• Children’s literature• Ecocritical
Shakespeare• Cross-disciplinary
research
Thank You For the Course and Good Luck with the Exam!