Pieter Vermeulen

The Anthropocene has fundamentally changed the way we think about our relation to nonhuman life and to the planet. This book is the first to critically survey how the Anthropocene is enriching the study of literature and inspiring contemporary poetry and fiction. Engaging with topics such as genre, life, extinction, memory, infrastructure, energy, and the future, the book makes a compelling case for literature’s unique contribution to contemporary environmental thought. It pays attention to literature’s imaginative and narrative resources, and also to its appeal to the emotions and its relation to the material world. As the Anthropocene enjoins us to read the signals the planet is sending and to ponder the traces we leave on the Earth, it is also, this book argues, a literary problem. Literature and the Anthropocene maps key debates and introduces the often difficult vocabulary for capturing the entanglement of human and nonhuman lives in an insightful way. Alternating between accessible discussions of prominent theories and concise readings of major works of Anthropocene literature, the book serves as an indispensable guide to this exciting new subfield for academics and students of literature and the environmental humanities.

Literature and the Anthropocene

Lucy Bond

Stef Craps

Though still a relatively young field, memory studies has undergone significant transformations since it first coalesced as an area of inquiry. Increasingly, scholars understand memory to be a fluid, dynamic, unbound phenomenon—a process rather than a reified object. Embodying just such an elastic approach, this state-of-the-field collection systematically explores the transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary dimensions of memory—four key dynamics that have sometimes been studied in isolation but never in such an integrated manner. Memory Unbound places leading researchers in conversation with emerging voices in the field to recast our understanding of memory’s distinctive variability.

Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies

Memory Unbound

Theo d'. Haen

Cultural Identity and Postmodern Writing seeks to ascertain the relationship obtaining between the specific form postmodernism assumes in a given culture, and the national narrative in which that culture traditionally recognizes itself. Theo D'haen provides a general introduction to the issue of “cultural identity and postmodern writing.” Jos Joosten and Thomas Vaessens take a look at Dutch literature, and particular Dutch poetry, in relation to “postmodernism.” Robert Haak and Andrea Kunne do the same with regard to, respectively, German and Austrian literature, while Roel Daamen turns to Scottish literature. Patricia Krus discusses postmodernism in relation to Caribbean literature, and Kristian van Haesendonck and Nanne Timmer turn their attention to Puerto Rican and Cuban literature, while Adriana Churampi deals with Peruvian literature. Finally, Markha Valenta investigates the roots of the postmodernism debate in the United States. This volume is of interest to all students and scholars of modern and contemporary literature, and to anyone interested in issues of identity as linked to matters of culture.

Cultural Identity and Postmodern Writing

This book gives a critically survey how the Anthropocene is enriching the study of literature and inspiring contemporary poetry and fiction. Engaging with topics such as genre, life, extinction, memory, infrastructure, energy, and the future, the book makes a compelling case for literature's unique contribution to contemporary environmental thought

Pieter Vermeulen

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