Ecocriticism on the Edge : The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept
Author(s): Timothy Clark
The twenty-first century has seen an increased awareness of the forms of environmental destruction that cannot immediately be seen, localised or, by some, even acknowledged.
Ecocriticism on the Edge explores the possibility of a new mode of critical practice, one fully engaged with the destructive force of the planetary environmental crisis. Timothy Clark argues that, in literary and cultural criticism, the “Anthropocene”, which names the epoch in which human impacts on the planet's ecological systems reach a dangerous limit, also represents a threshold at which modes of interpretation that once seemed sufficient or progressive become, in this new counterintuitive context, inadequate or even latently destructive. The book includes analyses of literary works, including texts by Paule Marshall, Gary Snyder, Ben Okri, Henry Lawson, Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver.
Review(s):
“I am very excited by this book. Clark shows a game-changing willingness to face the implications of environmental priorities, and develop new ways of reading based on those priorities. After this book, ecocriticism should never be the same again.” —Richard Kerridge, ecocritic, author of Cold Blood (2014) and teacher of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, UK.
ISBN: 9781472506481