This study analyzes the Canadian poet, typographer, and translator Robert Bringhurst’s (b. 1946) extensive engagement with the poetry, poetics and metaphysical concerns of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). It asserts that Bringhurst’s poetry responds to Stevens’ poetry and poetics to a degree that has not previously been recognized. Although Bringhurst’s mature poetry—his works from the mid-1970s and after—departs from the obvious imitation of the elder poet’s writing that is present in his early poems, it continues to engage some of Stevens’ central concerns, namely the fertility of the liminal moment and/or space and a meditative contemplation of the physical world that frequently challenges anthropocentric narcissism. The dissertation proposes that Bringhurst shares Stevens’ desire to inscribe an authentic encounter between person and place. The first chapters establish the literary basis for the comparison of the poets’ works. The following chapters show how both poets draw on the symbology and metaphors of the Christian concept of the Sacrament in order to describe poetically the nature of the personally renewing experience of place. They examine poems from throughout Stevens’ career, including those that express a more determinedly materialistic vision, and the pervasive use of sacramental terminology in Bringhurst’s polyphonic poetry; such language is integral to Bringhurst’s efforts to describe a transformative experience of encounter with the physical world. The final chapters contend that Stevens’ and Bringhurst’s divergent visions of the ethical responsibility of poetry are shaped by their differing perspectives on the relation between the poem and the sacramental experience inscribed within it. The dissertation makes original contributions to the study of the poetry of both Bringhurst and Stevens. It demonstrates the significance of the inheritances of the Protestant religious tradition to both poets’ bodies of work, and it casts Bringhurst as a profoundly Stevensian author. A study of poetic influence, it attests to the vitality of Stevens and Bringhurst as ecologically oriented writers concerned with the meaning of place in North America. / Graduate / 2018-01-17

Into the Into of Earth Itself is a poetry collection that investigates the relationship between ecological violation and the violation of women, as well as toxicity and toxic masculinity. In doing so, it draws from the histories of two Pennsylvania towns: Palmerton and Centralia. The former is a Superfund site ravaged by zinc pollution and currently under threat of hydraulic fracturing and pipeline expansion. The latter is a nearby ghost town that was condemned and evacuated due to an underground mine fire, which will continue for another 200 years. The manuscript uses visual forms and digital text mining techniques to craft poetry about these extractive relationships to land and women. The speaker asks herself: As a woman, how have I also been mined and fracked by these same societal technologies? / Master of Fine Arts / Into the Into of Earth Itself is a poetry collection.

Drawing on traditions of cultural geography and creativity, the environmental humanities, and critical geographic theory, this dissertation includes five articles that develop geopoetics as a sub-field of the geohumanities. It sketches the contours of three modes of geopoetics: as creative geography, as literary geography, and as geophilosophy. Through site-based projects at three Sonoran Desert ecological research and tourism sites, it furthers the use of artistic and literary practice in geohumanities research, employs that practice to interrogate climate change and Anthropocene narratives, and addresses the role of art and literature in environmental issues. In addition, it utilizes the development and teaching of a community course on climate change and poetry as an additional "site" of research, to illustrate the role of arts and humanities approaches to global environmental change. Drawing on the content of the climate change and poetry course, it also includes a close reading of the work of five contemporary Indigenous ecopoets in relation to climate narratives. This dissertation proposes that geopoetics, literally "earth-making," is broadly relevant to questions of socio-ecological futures and is a means to imagine and enact other ways of inhabiting the world.

Emily Dickinson's poetry functions where scientific attention to the physical world and abstract theorizing about the ineffable intersect. Critics who emphasize the poet's dedication to the scientific often take for granted how deeply the uncertainty that underlies all of Dickinson's poetry opposes scientific discussion of the day. Meteorology is an exceptional nineteenth-century science because it takes as its subject complex systems which are inexplicable in Newtonian terms. As such, meteorology can articulate the ways that Dickinson bridges the divide between the unknown and the known, particularly as she relates to the interplay of nature and culture, the role of careful observation in the face of uncertainty, and issues of home and dwelling. These are themes integral to and further elaborated by contemporary ecocritical discourse.

La quête de l'identité est au cœur des ouvrages de fiction écrits par les auteurs indiens d'Amérique du Nord au cours du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Les héros, voire anti-héros, de ces romans et de ces nouvelles tentent de reconquérir une dignité perdue et se trouvent confrontés à des épreuves, parfois absurdes, qu'ils surmontent tant bien que mal. Dans les descriptions souvent très crues du quotidien de la vie dans les réserves indiennes ou les réserves urbaines, surgit une part de magie qui s'immisce dans les situations les plus banales, habite les objets les plus inattendus, et transcende la fatalité des destins. Cette magie suscite des esprits tutélaires hybrides, entre monde occidental et traditions autochtones, qui déguisent leur présence pour fédérer les protagonistes en une sorte de clan moderne et revisité. Ce faisant, ils redonnent du sens aux errances existentielles des personnages. Ce procédé littéraire n'est pas sans rappeler le totémisme rituel, pratique animiste ancestrale que l'on croyait oubliée et qui a été largement documentée par les anthropologues dans le courant du XIXe siècle. Notre corpus se réduit à Louise Erdrich, David Treuer, Eden Robinson et Joseph Boyden qui imaginent de nouvelles figures totémiques pour aborder différemment la question identitaire. La présente thèse étudie comment cette réappropriation du totémisme par le biais de la réinvention littéraire engage un mouvement en trois temps qui permet de perpétuer, de régénérer et de (re)créer une certaine identité amérindienne. / The quest for identity is a central topic of North American contemporary Native fiction which recurrently dwells on the ontological confusion experienced by Native and bicultural protagonists and the subsequent urge to come to terms with their distinctiveness. Indeed, in many novels and short-stories the heroes, or anti-heroes, attempt to recover their lost dignity for better or worse while overcoming obstacles and enduring ordeals that sometimes prove absurd. Meanwhile, an unexpected magic pervades the crude descriptions of modern day life on Canadian reserves and American reservations and intrudes in the most trivial situations eventually transcending fate and destiny. The hybrid tutelar spirits thus staged, symbolically referring as much to the Western world as to secular indigenous traditions, disguise their presence with the aim to bring together the estranged protagonists in a reshaped modern clan. By so doing, these supernatural forces endow the characters' physical and spiritual journeys with renewed meanings. Such a process directly alludes to ritualized totemism, an array of ancient animistic practices and beliefs thoroughly documented by 19th century anthropologists. Interestingly, many contemporary Native authors, among whom Louise Erdrich, David Treuer, Eden Robinson et Joseph Boyden, contrive new totems in order to address otherwise the identity issue. This thesis aims to demonstrate how their literary reinvention of totemism engages a threefold movement, to perpetuate, rejuvenate and (re)create a specific form of Native identity.

Gary Snyder has offered, in poems and essays, ways to acknowledge the interrelationships of humans with the more-than-human. He questions common notions of selfness as well as understandings of what it is to be human in relationship to other species and ecosystems, and he offers new paradigms for the relationship between cultures and the ecosystems in which these cultures reside. These new paradigms are rooted in a reevaluation of our attitudes toward our physical bodies which impacts our relationship to the earth and raises new possibilities for an ecological spirituality or philosophy. The sum of Snyder's endeavors is a foundation for an understanding of ecopoetics. Snyder's poem "The Trail is Not a Trail" is an interesting place to begin examining how human perceptions of the self are central to the kinds of relationships that humans believe are possible between our species and everything else. In this poem there is a curious fusion of the speaker and the trail. In fact, with each successive line they become increasingly difficult to separate. The physical self is central to Snyder's poetry because his is a poetry of the self physically rooted in ever-shifting relationship with the biosphere. The relationship of the self to the biosphere in Snyder's poetry also points toward a spiritual experience that can be called ecomysticism, by which I mean the space where new ecological paradigms and mystical understandings of the world overlap. Ecomysticism goes beyond mysticisms that describe a spiritual being longing for supernatural experience while being "unfortunately" trapped in a physical body. Ecomysticism emphasizes the spiritual and physical interrelatedness or interconnectedness of all matter, the human and the more-than-human. The integration of the spiritual and physical aspects of the self is only possible through an awareness of the interrelatedness of the self and the non-human. New paradigms for the self are thus central to ecopoetics, a poetics that seeks to heal the rift between humans and the biosphere.

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The purpose of this study is to explore how memory functions ecologically in the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer. The term ecology is useful because of its connotative associations with the natural world as well as its broader definition of being a network of relationships as they function within and relate to their environment. Throughout his oeuvre, Tranströmer positions memory as being an external presence with which he interacts primarily because he honors it as a living being and he feels a poetic responsibility to it. As such, he grapples with the challenges of representation, particularly the limitations of language. Ultimately, he employs an ecopoetic strategy in honoring his duty to memory and creating poems that are themselves ecological milieux in which such memories can live on.

Cette étude s’interroge sur l’écriture de la nature dans la littérature contemporaine en français. À partir d’un corpus de textes pris dans la littérature européenne (Chevillard, Michon, Mingarelli, Ollier, Réda, Rouaud, Simon, Tesson, Trassard) et antillaise (Chamoiseau, Glissant, Maximin), l’auteur examine comment la menace écologique influe sur la géographie littéraire et plus généralement sur la représentation de l’espace. Le cadre théorique utilisé à cet effet se nourrit, d’une part, de l’écocritique nord-américaine et s’inscrit, d’autre part, dans l’écopoétique, plus à même de rendre compte de la littérature en français. La recherche démontre que la conscience écologique va de pair avec une nouvelle conception du monde qui met à mal les représentations traditionnelles de l’espace. L’exploration de l’espace sauvage ne conduit dès lors pas à une célébration d’un paysage sublime, mais associe les découvertes du voyageur tout au plus à un sublime suspendu, tremblé et par là provisoire. De même, le récit préhistorique ne recourt pas aux stratégies littéraires du roman préhistorique traditionnel. Plutôt que de procéder comme ce dernier à la représentation du temps préhistorique et que de montrer l’arrivée triomphante de l’homme, le récit contemporain se livre, au contraire, à une enquête incertaine autour de la trace humaine dans l’espace. Il apparaît ainsi un décalage entre la relativité de l’histoire humaine et la permanence du temps géologique. La littérature met en avant la nécessaire reconfiguration des représentations traditionnelles de l’espace et remet en cause la place centrale que l’homme s’attribue. Il s’agit pour les textes de montrer en quoi la géographie apparaît comme une entité plastique et mobile, comme en témoigne par exemple le motif du jardin qui réconcilie les efforts d’aménagement de l’homme et l’énergie désordonnée de la nature. L’esthétique contemporaine relève alors d’une mobilité écopoétique en signe d'une nouvelle empathie avec le monde. / This dissertation reflects on nature writing in French-speaking contemporary literature. Drawing on a corpus of literary texts from Europe (Chevillard, Michon, Mingarelli, Ollier, Réda, Rouaud, Simon, Tesson, Trassard) and the Caribbean (Chamoiseau, Glissant, Maximin), the author examines how awareness of ecological peril determines literary geographies and the representation of space more generally. North-American ecocriticism offers a part of the theoretical framework, but recent findings in European ecopoetics prove to be more suitable to analyse literature in French. The study shows that ecological awareness entails a new worldview that invalidates pre-existing representations of space. Thus, exploring the wilderness does not longer lead the observer to celebrate the sublime landscapes that nature offers him. On the contrary, the encounter with the wilderness tends to be unsuccessful, and if it entails any sublime experience, it is equally a temporary and a fragile one. Likewise, the prehistoric narrative does not longer rely on the literary strategies of the traditional prehistoric novel: rather than to reconstruct a prehistoric time and to show the triumphant arrival of humankind as does the latter, the contemporary narrative conducts in the present an uncertain and troubled investigation regarding the significance of prehistoric human traces. Literary texts thus show the discrepancy between the relativity of human history and the permanence of geological time. They underline the need to reconfigure traditional representations of space and question the central position that humankind attributes to himself. Literature then promotes space as a plastic and mobile entity. The garden more precisely appears to be a motive that reconciles human efforts of planning and managing with the disorderly energy of nature. Contemporary literary aesthetics appear then to be determined by an ecopoetic mobility that signals a new empathy with the world. / In deze studie wordt het natuurschrijven (nature writing) in de hedendaagse Franssprekende literatuur ondervraagdUitgaand van een corpus van Europese (Chevillard, Michon, Mingarelli, Ollier, Réda, Rouaud, Simon, Tesson, Trassard) en Caribische teksten (Chamoiseau, Glissant, Maximin), bestudeert de auteur hoe de bewustwording van de ecologische crisis de literaire afbeelding van plaats beïnvloedt. Het theoretisch kader wordt deels door de Noord-Amerikaanse ecokritiek verschaft, maar de recente ondervindingen van de Europese ecopoetiek blijken nog beter aangepast aan de Franstalige literatuur. Het onderzoek toont aan dat de ecologische crisis een nieuw wereldbeeld meebrengt dat de traditionele weergave van plaats in vraag stelt. De verkenning van de wildernis leidt bijvoorbeeld niet tot een sublimering van het natuurlandschap, maar de ontdekkingen van de reiziger blijven beperkt tot een gedempt subliem, een tijdelijke gebeurtenis die op elk ogenblik onderbroken kan worden. Het prehistorisch verhaal vernieuwt evenzeer de literaire structuren van de traditionele prehistorische roman. Daar waar deze laatste de prehistorische tijd getrouw weergeeft en de triomf van de mensheid in beeld brengt, vertelt het prehistorische verhaal veeleer een twijfelende en angstig zoektocht omtrent de prehistorische sporen van de mensheid in het landschap. De relatieve historische tijd van de mens contrasteert zo met de ononderbroken eeuwigheid van de geologische tijd. Wat de literatuur dan naar voor brengt, is de nood om de bestaande verwoordingen van ruimtegevoel te herzien en om de mens te doen afzien van de centrale plaats die hij zich gewoonlijk toekent. Plaats is dan, zoals de teksten aantonen, een plastisch en mobiel gegeven. Zo blijkt de tuin een plek te zijn die de menselijke zin voor ordening en vormgeving verzoent met de ontembare energie van de natuur. De esthetische weergave van plaats in de hedendaagse literatuur beantwoordt zo aan een ecopoëtische beweeglijkheid als teken van een vernieuwde overeenstemming met de wereld.

This dissertation engages a number of currents of environmental criticism and rhetoric in an analysis of the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of the southeastern United States. I examine conceptions of genitive relationships with the environment as portrayed in the work of diverse writers, primarily William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Southern literature is rarely addressed in ecocritical studies, and to date no work offers an intensive and focused examination of the rhetoric employed in conceptions of environmental ownership. However, southern literature and culture provides fertile ground to trace the creation, development, and communication of environmental values because of its history of agrarianism, slavery, and a literary tradition committed to a sense of place. I argue that the concerns of the two main distinctive threads of environmental literary scholarship - ecopoetics and environmentalism of the poor - neatly overlap in the literature of the South. I employ rhetorical theory and phenomenology to argue that southern authors call into question traditional forms of writing about nature - such as pastoral, the sublime, and wilderness narratives - to reinvent and revitalize those forms in order to develop and communicate modes of reciprocal ownership of natural and cultural environments. These writers not only imagine models of personal and communal coexistence with the environment, but also provide new ways of thinking about environmental justice. The intersection of individual and social relationships with history and nature in Southern literature provides new models for thinking about environmental relationships and how they are communicated. I argue that expressions of environmental ownership and belonging suggest how individuals and groups can better understand their distance and proximity to their environments, which may result in new valuations of personal and social environmental relationships.