Exhausted ecologies : modernism and environmental recovery / Andrew Kalaidjian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kalaidjian, Andrew, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Modernism (Literature).

English literature--20th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Civilization, Modern, in literature.

Environment in literature.

Ecocriticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 234 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Summary:

This book evaluates twentieth century British and Global Anglophone literature in relation to the growth of ecological thinking in the United Kingdom. Restless modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys developed a literary aesthetic of slowness and immediacy to critique the exhausting and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and industrial life. At the same time, environmental groups such as the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves and the Smoke Abatement League moved from economic registers of 'value' and 'trust' to more cultural terms of 'recovery' and 'regeneration' to position nature as a healing force in the postwar era. Through a variety of literary, scientific, and political texts, an environmental movement emerged alongside the fast, fragmented, and traumatic aspects of modernization in order to sustain place and community in terms of lateral influence and ecological dependence.

Contents:

Introduction: Places of Rest

I. Nature's Reserves: Rural Exhaustion, Inertia, and Generative Aesthetics

II. Urban Environs: James Joyce and the Politics of Shared Atmosphere

III. Waste Lands: Dark Pastoral in T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Djuna Barnes

IV. Uprooting Empire: Jean Rhys and Unrest in Imperial Centers

V. Decolonizing Ecology: Chinua Achebe's New Forms of Unease

Conclusion: The Limits of Modernist Regeneration.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Jan 2020).

ISBN:

1-108-80144-7

1-108-80155-2

1-108-77521-7