Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts (Environmental Cultures)

Drawing on the latest debates in ecocritical theory and sustainability studies, Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts outlines a new approach to the reading of literary texts. Applying this approach to works by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Zakes Mda, and Amitav Ghosh, Literature as Cultural Ecology is an essential contribution to the contemporary environmental humanities.. Hubert Zapf considers the ways in which literature operates as a form of cultural ecology, using language, imagination and critique to challenge and transform cultural narratives of humanity's relationship to nature. In this way, the book demonstrates the important role that literature plays in creating a more sustainable way of life

Here is intellectual creativity. It releases literature from its narrow philological definition and places it in the context of current concerns of environmental humanities. This book not only reveals the intersections between "cultural ecology" and "ecocriticism," but it profoundly and accessibly reinforces the significance of literature on a changing, wounded, beautiful planet. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Combining the arts and the social and natural sciences, this new and imaginative approach covers fre

Hubert Zapf is Professor and Chair of American Literature at the University of Augsburg, Germany. . His recent books include, as co-editor, American Studies Today: New Research Agendas (2014) and English and American Studies: Theory and Practice (2012)