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The Ecological Plot : How Stories Gave Rise to a Science / John MacNeill Miller.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Miller, John MacNeill, 1984- author.
- Series:
- Under the sign of nature.
- Under the Sign of Nature Series
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Nature in literature.
- Ecology in literature.
- Ecocriticism.
- English literature--History and criticism.
- English literature.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (225 pages)
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Charlottesville, Virginia : University of Virginia Press, 2024
- Summary:
- Unraveling the surprising history of the concept of ecology The Ecological Plot traces the roots of this most mainstream branch of science back to an unexpected source: narrative storytelling. Weaving together the histories of different disciplines, John MacNeill Miller shows how pioneering thinkers drew on a shared set of literary techniques to imagine how different species could work together as a single, interdependent community, redefining the way we conceptualize the natural world. Beginning with a series of revolutionary exchanges between the political economist Thomas Robert Malthus, the writer Harriet Martineau, and the naturalist Charles Darwin, The Ecological Plot identifies the foundations of modern notions of ecology, economics, and realist fiction, maps how they evolved through the works of Victorian writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, and shows how they resurfaced in the works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson a century later. Miller's book reveals why our most sophisticated efforts to explain humanity's relationship to nature have been segregated into different disciplines and makes an argument for the importance of bringing these separate ways of understanding the world back together as a crucial step toward solving the environmental, economic, and ethical problems of the present.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
- Description based on print version record.
- Other Format:
- Print version: Miller, John MacNeill The Ecological Plot
- ISBN:
- 9780813951799
- OCLC:
- 1450837072
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