In 2010, Simon Estok observed that, "the most immediate question ecocriticism can ask is about how our assumptions about animals affect the natural environment". In this thesis, I respond to this challenge by generating a sustained conversation between the hitherto surprisingly distinct fields of animal studies and ecocriticism. I do this by formulating a new critical concept, that of the geomorphic animal, which I use to show how literary representations of animals often expose the many complex ways in which they constitute space rather than simply inhabiting it. This, in turn, should make them central to future ecocritical readings. I focus on two periods, medieval and modern; the broad historical and generic scope of this thesis is intended to demonstrate the conceptual validity and robustness of geomorphic readings. Chapter One shows how concerns with death and symbiosis are expressed through the earth-bound activities of the geomorphic animals of the Exeter Book riddles. Chapter Two examines geomorphic whales in texts deriving from two related traditions: the Book of Jonah and the Physiologus. Chapters Three and Four focus on modern theatre, which affords distinctive ways of articulating the spatial implications of geomorphism. Chapter Three discusses the literary representation of museums and zoos in terms of the interpretative complexities generated by staging and spectacle. Chapter Four, focusing on mediation, discusses the interplay between animals, viewpoints and place in theatre, also taking into account particular issues arising from the adaptation of plays into films. This argument paves the way to addressing the geomorphic depiction of marginalised humans and human groups, suggesting the critical potential of geomorphism as a means of furthering feminist and post-colonialist aims.

Quels peuvent être les espaces d’interaction entre écriture et écologie – comprises toutes deux dans leur sens large – à l’ère de l’Anthropocène ? En prenant pour pivot de réflexion les textes de Wu Ming-yi吳明益 (1971-), auteur taïwanais contemporain, cette thèse souhaite interroger ces interactions à travers trois modalités :1) la mise en narration de l’environnement naturel : que signifie « écrire la nature » ? Quelles incidences esthétiques, politiques, ontologiques induisent l’utilisation de la catégorie discursive de « nature » et son dépassement, à travers par exemple l’écriture de l’espace urbain, au profit d’une « écopoétique » ?2) l’écriture et la pratique écologiste : comment l’écriture investit les plateformes idéologiques, de la réécriture de l’histoire (post)coloniale de Taïwan à la résistance militante ?3) l’écriture et l’imagination littéraire de devenirs-humain et de devenirs-monde alternatifs : comment l’écriture peut fait naître la possibilité d’envisager l’existence d’un monde commun respectueux du divers ?À l’appui d’une lecture écocritique des œuvres de Wu Ming-yi – sans limitation de genre (romans, nouvelles, essais et même travaux académiques) – et leur mise en perspective avec d’autres textes (littéraires ou non) et issus d’horizons géographiques différents, l’objectif de cette thèse est ainsi de réfléchir sur la poétique de la relation telle qu’elle s’exprime dans l’appropriation par Wu de problématiques environnementales dans le contexte spécifique de Taïwan.Nous essaierons de nous intéresser plus particulièrement à l’écopoétique en tant que réflexion sur l’idée de « nature », en tant que programme cosmopolitique et en tant que philosophie concrète et rhizomatique de la Relation. / Due to its highly transversal dimension, the contemporary paradigm of the Anthropocene forces us to profoundly rethink the mapping of knowledge domains. Then, how to reconsider the interstitial spaces between ecology and writing, at an age when the human influence has become the most powerful geophysical force on the planet? By focusing mainly on the Taiwanese contemporary writer Wu Ming-yi 吳明益 (1971-), this thesis addresses these interactions through three lenses: 1) writing and observation of the natural environment; 2) writing and environmental 2 activism and 3) writing and the literary imagination of alternative relational becomings. This thesis offers an ecocritical reading of Wu Ming-yi’s works putting them into perspective with other texts (literary or not) coming from different geographical backgrounds. This study aims at highlighting the way in which Wu’s texts are creating a kind of poetics of Relation in the socio-historical context of Taiwan, in a time when ecological crisis transcend our normative conceptions of the local and the global.

The purpose of this essay is to examine J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World to investigate how the relationship between humans and nature affects humanity, and whether humanity is indestructible. By performing an eco-critical reading of The Drowned World, the protagonist’s actions and choices on his journey are examined, as well as how they affect his partner, comrades and nature. In this process, the result was that a complete lack of conscious humanity is impossible as the basic human instincts linger. Furthermore, this essay provides didactical approaches to teaching this novel in an upper-secondary school classroom as well as insight into the many aspects of the novel, which are comparable to modern day society on terms of politics, globalism and environmentalism.

In this dissertation, Wallace Stevens' imagination-reality problem as depicted in his poetry is discussed in terms of an eco-critical map-territory divide. Stevens's metaphor of "the necessary angel" acts to mediate human necessity, the map, with natural necessity, the territory, in order to retain contact with changing cultural and environmental conditions. At stake in this mediation are individual freedom and the pertinence of the imagination to the experience of reality. In Chapter 2, the attempt at reconciliation of these two necessities will be described in terms of surrealism. Stevens's particular approach to surrealism emphasizes separating and delineating natural necessity from human necessity so that through the poem the reader can experience the miracle of their reconciliation. In Chapter 3, this delineation of the two necessities, map and territory, will be examined against Modernist "decreation," which is the stripping bare of human perception for the purpose of regaining glimpses of the first idea of the external world. And in Chapter 4, Stevens's approach to the problem of the map-territory divide will be considered against his alienation or internal exile: balancing nature and identity through mediating fictions results in a compromised approach to the marriage of mind and culture in a historically situated place.

Since its establishment, the study of environmental literature has included a great deal of research which has based its arguments on assumptions that state that climate fiction contains persuasive elements that are impactful on readers. The problem with these assumptions is that they do not offer any empirical proof to demonstrate their arguments. This thesis offers an empirical study of the reception of Lydia Millet’s short story “Zoogoing” and examines whether or not the story is able to generate an animal welfare consciousness in the context of climate change within an audience that includes 10 participants from Bahrain. This project was conducted via two surveys on SurveySparrow, one before and the other after the participants had read the story. From the findings, it was revealed that the extinction narrative was able to help the readers conceptualize future ecological possibilities. Although the narrative was able to heighten the participants’ consciousness about environmental destruction, their concern for animal conservation remained the same. What was speculated from the analysis in this thesis was that the story had lacked a representation of animals that would focus the participants’ gaze on animal extinction.

The focus of this diploma thesis is the reflection of environmental issues as reflected in post-war Czech prose. I'm doing so through several titles which were chosen on the basis of my resarch. Firstly I introduced their environmental content and character, then I juxtaposed these titles through hermeneutic approach. The comparison brought up several motives and characteristics these titles have in common, I also described which environmental issues are presented, and how they are depicted in these text. I put an emphasis on the context of the observed period (especially the political situation) in which these texts were created. This context is also presented in the chapter about environmental situation on the Czech territory and in the chapter focused on the historical course of Czech post-war prose. I'm introducing an ecocriticism as a part of a literary science and discussing the reception of environmenal issues in Czech prose in general. Key words Czech post-war prose, environmental issue, hermeneutics, ecocriticism

My study challenges our current valorization of movement and flow in readings of African American literature. I do so through an exploration of the representations of the black agrarian masses who either choose to remain or could not afford the spectacular forms of escape to urban life which many essentialized as freedom. In the dramatic and pivotal decades following emancipation, African American leaders attempted to check the growing apartheid by the “combination” of diverse African American communities: North and South, professional and working class. This required that they move beyond the question of whether one was free or slave to the more tangled questions of freedom related to economic class, access to and distinctions of culture, and the opportunities of the city versus the country. Their writing was one means to seek out a more nationally defined community, but their efforts towards racial unity had to resolve the conspicuous differences regarding region and class. A difficult negotiation of difference ensued. In this negotiation, I argue, an agrarian form of freedom manifests itself in the literature of the professional class despite the intraracial pressures of “uplift” ideology which skewed representation toward middle-class life. The politics as well as the values and culture of the agrarian class surface. The agrarian themes of community, remaining, and an environmentalism of the poor contest the valorization of urban industrialism and self-made man ideology which are linked to presentations of a city-life as a life of freedom.

This thesis examines transformations of human characters into trees, stones, and water sources in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The current climate crisis is partly the result of a view of nature as a passive object, or inert matter, that humans without consequences can exploit. Using primarily the ecocritical theory new materialism, this thesis is a study of how nonhuman organisms can be assumed to have agency in order to alter this view of nature. The characters in the Metamorphoses that transform have different forms of agency before and after transformation depending on the body they inhabit. With close reading of the transformations themselves and the portrayal of the characters after transformation, the thesis finds that the material reality of the body determines what a body can do. Thus, it is possible to use the Metamorphoses to do a contemporary ecocritical reading that shows how a narrative can portray nature and nonhuman organisms with as much importance as human organism. By understanding the agency of nature and find it to be an active subject instead of only an object, it can change the relationship humans have with nature to one that is less exploitative.

This thesis paper illuminates nature and its relationship to the characters in LouiseErdrich’s novel Love Medicine. Now more than ever, there is a need for literatureanalyses that explores nature with a critical lens; it is a need brought forth by thecontemporary world, namely, the global environmental crisis. Nature is both preciousand omnipresent, and some cultures have a deep respect for this simple truth. Such isthe case with some of the Ojibwe people in Love Medicine. This thesis explores theclose relationship with nature evinced by some of the Native American characters inLove Medicine. Moreover, it illustrates the construed idea and portrayal of westernsocieties as destructive and exploitative.

Over the course of his fifty-year career, Mexican writer José Emilio Pacheco has almost habitually written poetry about environmental themes especially those related to pollution, extraction, deforestation, and other related themes of destruction. Simultaneously, his work has engaged with questions of temporality, namely the passing of time and the inherent violence of such questions. In this essay, I examine a selection of Pacheco's poetry from the 1970s to the early 2000s, demonstrating Pacheco's marrying of the two concepts: environmental degradation and time. This marriage results in a provocative synthesis of eco-apocalypse, a phenomenon that details a paradoxical end that never actually arrives, but only consistently worsens. I illuminate Pacheco's work by incorporating Rob Nixon's concept of "slow violence”, which informs my reading of the poetry by calling to its imaginative power. This power allows it to depict that which is imperceptible, either because it moves too slowly or too broadly to be witnessed by the human observant. In short, Pacheco's poetry addresses human-perceived time and natural or deep time in light of the ongoing apocalypse, which, despite the morose tone of the poetry, obliquely urges the reader towards an awareness of eco-apocalypse.