Prominent within various scientific journals, news media outlets, and online publications are conversations surrounding what is dubbed “climate anxiety.” This wide-stemmed social unrest is caused, in large part, by the unrelenting, consistent data from the scientific community reporting rising sea levels, species extinction, and “record-breaking” heatwaves as well as an increasing average of global temperatures, that seem to top the next every year for the past decade. However, an underlying thread to these reports remains largely consistent. Unless serious regard is given to our natural surroundings and how we have come to interact within it, regions of the Earth considered desirable for human life will likely become uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable to humans and other species. When addressed so simply and plainly, it seems that the response to such life-altering implications ought to be simple: do whatever it takes to ensure that a diversity of life, including that of humankind, can continue on the planet Earth. Voices of the scientific community have decreed that a driving force behind the lackadaisical approach to deterring such dire climatological circumstances, is the inability to grasp the immense scope of climate change issues. This thesis, then, aims at proposing a directive to correct this problematic mentality, and a specific generation to combat this nature. Using the lens of ecocriticism, the study of literature and the environment, combined with cutting-edge theoretical findings in the field, I will focus on the literary portrayal of climate change within young-adult dystopian fiction. While regarding the scholarship on the recent increase of YA fiction that takes a critical approach to human ethics and the portrayal of the demise of the natural environment in those texts, I will examine how this trend responds to my ideas of young-adult fiction functioning within Ecocriticism. Moreover, you will see a pattern charting how literature can revolutionize and evolve the mind frame of human ethics on a planetary scale, starting with the young adult readers. Further, I will highlight how these ideologies could and ought to be incorporated into a composition classroom. Composition already has a strong history of grounding itself in the notion of identity, and how contingent factors (social, political, economic, ecological, etc.) are integrated into the construction of that identity. This thesis poses that if we can introduce a sense of how those factors affect our ability to act in the natural world and potential consequences of these actions by way of pop culture outlets like YA Climate Fiction, readers can begin to re-shape our identities and actions, individually and collectively, towards Ecocritical ethics and awareness.

The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the supernatural alike are set off against human society as alien and hostile. However, the study of this antithesis has typically been restricted to the spatial aspect whereas the literature often exhibits seasonal patterns as well. This dissertation modifies the existing paradigm to accommodate the temporal dimension, demonstrating that winter stands out as a season in which the autonomy of the human domain is drawn into question in both Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian literature. In Old English poetry, winter is invoked as a landscape category connoting personal affliction and hostility, but it is rarely used to evoke a cyclical chronology. Old Icelandic literature likewise employs winter as a spatial category, here closely associated with the dangerous supernatural. However, Old Icelandic prose furthermore give winter a place in the annual progression of the seasons, which structures all but the most legendary of the sagas. Accordingly, the winter halfyear stands out as the near-exclusive domain of revenant hauntings and prophecy. These findings stand in stark contrast to the state of affairs in Middle English poetry, which associates diverse kinds of adventure and supernatural interaction with florid landscapes of spring and summer, and Maytime forests in particular. Even so, the seasonal imagery in <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em> makes clear that Middle English poets could use the contrastive functions of winter to no less effect than authors in neighbouring corpora. In partial explanation of authorial choices in this regard, it is proposed that winter settings are employed especially where a strong empathic response is desired of the audience.

The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the supernatural alike are set off against human society as alien and hostile. However, the study of this antithesis has typically been restricted to the spatial aspect whereas the literature often exhibits seasonal patterns as well. This dissertation modifies the existing paradigm to accommodate the temporal dimension, demonstrating that winter stands out as a season in which the autonomy of the human domain is drawn into question in both Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian literature. In Old English poetry, winter is invoked as a landscape category connoting personal affliction and hostility, but it is rarely used to evoke a cyclical chronology. Old Icelandic literature likewise employs winter as a spatial category, here closely associated with the dangerous supernatural. However, Old Icelandic prose furthermore give winter a place in the annual progression of the seasons, which structures all but the most legendary of the sagas. Accordingly, the winter halfyear stands out as the near-exclusive domain of revenant hauntings and prophecy. These findings stand in stark contrast to the state of affairs in Middle English poetry, which associates diverse kinds of adventure and supernatural interaction with florid landscapes of spring and summer, and Maytime forests in particular. Even so, the seasonal imagery in <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em> makes clear that Middle English poets could use the contrastive functions of winter to no less effect than authors in neighbouring corpora. In partial explanation of authorial choices in this regard, it is proposed that winter settings are employed especially where a strong empathic response is desired of the audience.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg’s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ”nature” is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ”nature” is tentatively defined as ”that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation”, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections. In Hos rådjur, wild nature takes the shape of a ”raw” animal that seems to threaten the human characters. In Mörk materia the threat to humanity comes from matter itself, matter that is dark and unruly. The nature/culture relationship is complex and continuously evolving, with several different and mutually exclusive possibilities being explored in the poems. Berg’s poetry has often been characterised as transcending boundaries, and metamorphoses and dissolution of boundaries between humans, animals and other organisms are abundant in the two poetry collections. Despite this, the study demonstrates how dualistic notions of nature and culture, body and spirit, are upheld throughout the texts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-256). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:39:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2376142 bytes, checksum: 27a387f4e1f29e60a000ad313b7e017a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This research aims to study the work Grande Sertão: Veredas, by Guimarães Rosa, focusing its efforts in investigating how the nature is represented in the narrative context and the intertwined human-nature-society relation. As understood here, the research leans to a recent strand of literary criticism, the Ecocriticism, once the web of the environmental relations that interlace human and nature through the literary text is delineated by it. The Work presents discussions in the area of the fundaments of Ecocriticism through some scholars as Cherryll Glotfelty, Greg Gerrard and other authors linked to ASLE, plus some Brazilian researchers who have been dedicating themselves to this line of research. Also, we observed some works that bring ideas consonant with this perspective and that can be considered pioneers, especially some from the nineteenth century. We sought, as an epistemological propose of approach, the phenomenological perspective, from the ideas of Edmund Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and the historical-sociocultural perspective, based in various scholars, for we consider these as relevant directions in the work studied. It is exposed the features of nature, ecology and environment that are contemporarily represented, in order to understand its present characteristics, given the typology of nature that are intrinsic to Rosa s work. A special focus is given to the backcountry trails to observe the symmetries and asymmetries between space and place, the objective and subjective representation of the backcountry area, how the power is characterized in that place, and how all this refers symbolically to the hinterland/world and the hinterland/man. Still within this perspective, we accompany the jagunços through the crossings of Sussuarão and the Sucruiú village. Meanwhile, we seek to understand the representation of the water in the work, since this element is, sometimes, essence and north of the narrative. Following the steps of the jagunços, we observe how is presented the man/animal relation in Riobaldo s narrative. Finally, we came closer to some characters intending to comprehend their sense of values and the actions expressed by them that, under a cautious eye, come to reveal itself. In this context, we also try to observe how these characters, throughout the narrative, can foster the Ecocriticism study. / Nesta pesquisa, estudamos a obra Grande sertão: veredas, de Guimarães Rosa, centrando esforços no sentido de investigar como está representada a natureza no contexto narrativo e a imbricada relação homem-natureza-sociedade. Tal como aqui entendida, a pesquisa inclina-se para uma recente vertente da crítica literária, a Écocrítica, uma vez que nela se delineia a teia de relações ambientais que entrecruzam a relação humano/natureza através do texto literário. O trabalho apresenta discussões no campo dos fundamentos da ecocrítica, através de alguns estudiosos, a exemplo de Cherryll Glotfelty, Greg Garrard e outros autores ligados à ASLE, além de alguns pesquisadores brasileiros que têm se dedicado a essa linha de pesquisa. Observamos, também, algumas obras que trazem ideias consoantes a essa perspectiva e podem ser consideradas pioneiras, notadamente algumas do século XIX. Buscamos, como proposta epistemológica de abordagem, as perspectivas fenomenológica, a partir das ideias de Edmund Husserl e Merleau-Ponty, e a histórico-sociocultural, alicerçada em diversos estudiosos, por considerarmos esses direcionamentos relevantes na obra estudada. Expõem-se as características da natureza, a ecologia e o meio ambiente que se encontram representados contemporaneamente, visando entender sua atualidade, face às tipologias de natureza que são intrínsecas à obra rosiana. Particular foco é dado às trilhas do sertão para observar as simetrias e assimetrias entre espaço e lugar, a representação objetiva e subjetiva do espaço sertão, como o poder se caracteriza nesse lugar, e como tudo isso remete, simbolicamente, ao sertão/mundo e ao sertão/homem. Ainda nessa perspectiva, acompanhamos os jagunços pelas travessias do Sussuarão e do povoado do Sucruiú. Nesse ínterim procuramos perceber a representação da água na obra, uma vez que esse elemento é, em alguns momentos, essência e norte da narrativa. Seguindo os passos dos jagunços, observamos como se apresenta a relação homem/animal na narrativa riobaldiana. Por último, fomos ao encontro de alguns personagens no intuito de compreender alguns sentidos de valores e ações por eles expressos que, a um olhar mais atento, findam por desvelar-se. Nesse contexto, procuramos observar, também, como esses personagens, ao longo da obra, podem fomentar o estudo ecocrítico.

This thesis attempts to develop a concept of 'ecological misapprehension' by means of an object-oriented ecocritical analysis of several works by J. M. Coetzee. Noting Coetzee's profound, often overlooked interest in nonhuman, nonanimal ecological existents (on the one hand), and his neomodernist propensity to interrogate the viability of signification (on the other), I argue that his works repeatedly gesture towards an ontological reality of ecological objects that is necessarily extratextual. I further argue that if human ‘readers’—both of and within Coetzee’s fiction—are inextricably entangled within modes of discourse by which meaning is made of those objects, the encounter between human subject and ecological object always takes place across a discursive threshold best understood in terms of the ‘irreducible gap’ that object-oriented ontology identifies between an object’s being and its perception. This gap problematises our apprehension of the ecological object as such, thus rendering ecological misapprehension inevitable—and, by extension, demanding that we remain attuned to the character, density, or degree of our propensity to misapprehend. Variants of this dynamic—and its troubling ramifications—are illuminated by means of close readings of a range of Coetzee’s texts, with particular attention paid to Disgrace, Life &amp; Times of Michael K, and the short story ‘Nietverloren’, and are subsequently compared with examples of misapprehension in the world beyond the page. By developing this concept and identifying examples of it both within and without Coetzee’s works, the thesis aims to illuminate a fundamental obstacle to productive modes of environmental thinking in the Anthropocene, to suggest the activist potential of metafiction and the postmodernist reading practices it encourages, and to reaffirm the potential social utility of literary scholarship when it is conducted with an awareness of its own tendency to misapprehend.

This essay examines J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings through the application of a theoretical framework of postcolonial ecocriticism, endeavoring to discern the author’s concerns and the environmental and colonial underpinnings interwoven in the novel through a thematic analysis focusing on the concepts of pastoral, nature, wilderness and development. The results show that Tolkien undoubtedly projected his profound sentiments for environmental disruption as a product of a rapidly changing world during his lifetime. Although Tolkien’s trilogy is a work of high fantasy written in a different context, this essay argues that it is valid for scrutiny in relation to contemporary society. Furthermore, this study investigates the implementation of the text in the Swedish EFLclassroom with the purpose of raising students’ awareness for, and investment in the environment, whilst improving their all-round communicative skills, ultimately educating for a sustainable future.

Syftet studien är att undersöka hur en skönlitterär barnbok öppnar för samtal om ekologisk hållbar utveckling med elever i årskurs 3. Barnboken som används ochanalyseras heter Lovis Ansjovis och jorden (2017). Den analyseras genom ett ekokritiskt perspektiv och boken läses upp för elever i helklass under ett lektionstillfälle. Efter högläsningen diskuterar eleverna tankar som boken gav dem. Deras funderingar skrivs upp i en tankekarta. Tankekartan, vår observation underlektionstillfället och textanalysen, ligger till grund för studiens resultat. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten som studien grundar sig på är ekokritik. Resultatet visar att Lovis Ansjovis och jorden främst skildrar ekologisk hållbar utveckling ur ett antropocentriskt perspektiv, med små inslag av ekocentrism. Eleverna visar under lektionstillfället med bokens hjälp en medvetenhet om ekologisk hållbar utveckling, som de kan samtala om.