Elemental ecocriticism : thinking with earth, air, water, and fire / Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, editor.

Duckert, Lowell, 1982- editor.

Series:

Book collections on Project MUSE.

UPCC book collections on Project MUSE. Philosophy and Religion.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmental ethics.

Four elements (Philosophy).

Materialism--Moral and ethical aspects.

Materialism.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (340 pages)

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis. MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2015]

System Details:

data file

Summary:

For centuries it was believed that all matter was composed of four elements: earth, air, water, and fire in promiscuous combination, bound by love and pulled apart by strife. Elemental theory offered a mode of understanding materiality that did not center the cosmos around the human. Outgrown as a science, the elements are now what we build our houses against, and their renunciation has fostered only estrangement from the material world. Elemental Ecocriticism shows how elemental materiality precipitates new engagements with the ecological. Here the classical elements reveal the vitality of supposedly inert substances (mud, water, earth, air), chemical processes (fire), and natural phenomena, as well as the promise in the abandoned and the unreal (ether, phlogiston, spontaneous generation). Decentering the human, this collection of essays provides important correctives to the idea of the material world as mere resource. Three response essays meditate on the connections of this collaborative project to the framing of modern-day ecological concerns. A renewed intimacy with the elemental holds the potential for a more dynamic environmental ethics and the possibility of a reinvigorated materialism.

Contents:

Introduction : Eleven Principles of the Elements / Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert

Pyromena : Fire's Doing / Anne Harris

Phlogiston / Steve Mentz

Airy Something / Valerie Allen

The Sea Above / Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Muddy Thinking / Sharon O'Dair

The Quintessence of Wit / Chris Barrett

Wet? / Julian Yates

Creeping Things : Spontaneous Generation and Material Creativity / Karl Steel

Earth's Prospects / Lowell Duckert

Elementality / Timothy Morton

Elemental Relations at the Edge / Cary Wolfe

Elemental Love in the Anthropocene / Stacy Alaimo

Coda : Wandering Elements and Natures to Come / Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Elemental ecocriticism

ISBN:

9781452945682

1452945683

OCLC:

942597647

Publisher Number:

10.5749/j.ctt1b18v88

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.