Few terms have garnered more recent attention in the sciences, humanities, and public sphere than the Anthropocene, the proposed epoch in which a human “signature” appears in the lithostratigraphic record. Anthropocene Reading considers the implications of this concept for literary history and critical method.
Entering into conversation with geologists and geographers, this volume reinterprets the cultural past in relation to the anthropogenic transformation of the Earth system, while showcasing the contributions literary analysis may make in conceptualizing this geohistorical event. The contributors examine how a range of literary texts, from The Tempest to contemporary dystopian novels to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, mediate the convergence of the social institutions, energy regimes, and planetary systems that support the reproduction of life. They explore the longstanding dialogue between imaginative literature and the earth sciences and show how scientists, novelists, and poets represent intersections of geological and human timescales, the deep past and a posthuman future, political exigency and the carbon cycle.
Accessibly written and representing a range of methodological perspectives, the essays in this volume consider what it means to read literary history in the Anthropocene.
Contributors include Juliana Chow, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Thomas H. Ford, Anne-Lise François, Noah Heringman, Matt Hooley, Stephanie LeMenager, Dana Luciano, Steve Mentz, Benjamin Morgan, Justin Neuman, Jennifer Wenzel, and Derek Woods.
Contents
Introduction - Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor
1 Anarky - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
2 Enter Anthropocene, Circa 1610 - Steve Mentz
3 The Anthropocene Reads Buffon; or, Reading Like Geology - Noah Heringman
4 Punctuating History Circa 1800: The Air of Jane Eyre - Thomas H. Ford
5 Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock’s Speculative Ichnology - Dana Luciano
7 Scale as Form: Thomas Hardy’s Rocks and Stars - Benjamin Morgan
8 Anthropocene Interruptions: Energy Recognition Scenes and the Myth of Global Cooling - Justin Neuman
9 Stratigraphy and Empire: Waiting for the Barbarians, Reading Under Duress - Jennifer Wenzel
10 Reading Vulnerably: Indigeneity and the Scale of Harm - Matt Hooley
11 Accelerated Reading: Fossil Fuels, Infowhelm, and Archival Life - Derek Woods
12 Climate Change and the Struggle for Genre - Stephanie LeMenager
13 Ungiving Time: Reading Lyric by the Light of the Anthropocene - Anne-Lise François
List of Contributors
Index
“All told, the 13 contributions offer varied and stimulating studies displaying how literary methods can effectively interrogate, reframe, and explicate the multi-faceted qualities and character of the Anthropocene.”
