New Materialist Literary Theory (eBook, PDF)

Critical Conceptions of Literature for the Anthropocene
Redaktion: Howaldt, Kerstin; Merten, Kai

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This edited collection builds on recent strands in philosophy that promote a critical conceptual return to the material world outside human culture. Through the lens of literary analysis and theory, it conceptualizes the potential of New Materialism as a timely mode of critique toward the current human condition and its effect on literature and the present. Organized around the key New Materialist concepts of entanglement and speculation, the chapters by renowned literary scholars and theorists approach literary texts and theory from onto-epistemological and speculative realist perspectives. Both concepts critically bespeak our precarious relation to matter during the Anthropocene. Entanglement analyzes this human inference with the material environment and its consequences, while speculation makes palpable our cognitive limits in grasping these consequences and our continued obligation to try to do so. Literature emerges as a site where entanglement and speculation, as well as their alignment, are intensively presented and negotiated. In highlighting these connections, the chapters in this collection bring entanglement and speculation (theory) together to form a critical literary theory fit for the Anthropocene.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 244
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. April 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798216337546
• Artikelnr.: 74836219

Autorenporträt

Kerstin Howaldt holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Erfurt. Kai Merten is professor of British literary studies at the University of Erfurt. He is the founder of the Erfurt Network on New Materialism (ENNM).

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter 1: Diffracting "stabilized/stabilizing binaries" of Contemporary
British Climate-Change Theater
Chapter 2: Pastoral Fieldwork: Wordsworth's Labour
Chapter 3: At First Blush: New Materialism and Computational Literary
Studies
Chapter 4: Quicksand, Lispector, and the Volatile Matters of Literary
Materialism
Chapter 5: Being a/part. Thinking About the Human/Nonhuman Relationship
Chapter 6: Resisting Finitude, or The Romantic Anthropocene
Chapter 7: At War with the Seasons: Wilfred Owen's "Exposure" and "Spring
Offensive"
Chapter 8: W.G. Sebald and the Exploded View
Part Three: Aligning Entanglement and Speculation
Chapter 9: Uncertain Materiality in the Neuronovel
Chapter 10: Diffracting Birds and Words in Nicholas Royle's An English
Guide to Birdwatching (2017)
Chapter 11: How To Get Outside-Assemblages in Speculative Nature Writing