From catastrophe to utopia, the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can speak to the 'Anthropocene'.

Offers an overview of American environmental literature across genres and time periods, introducing readers to a range of ecocritical methodologies.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to studying the diversity of American poetry in the twenty-first century.

This authoritative collection of rigorous but accessible essays investigates the exciting new interdisciplinary field of environmental literary criticism.

This book gathers diverse critical treatments from fifteen scholars of the posthuman and posthumanism together in a single volume.

The first ever companion to theatre and science brings together research on key topics, performances, and new areas of interest.

Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment, and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers. Since Tolkien and his many imitators, however, it has become a major publishing phenomenon. In this volume, critics and authors of fantasy look at its history since the Enlightenment, introduce readers to some of the different codes for the reading and understanding of fantasy, and examine some of the many varieties and subgenres of fantasy; from magical realism at the more literary end of the genre, to paranormal romance at the more popular end. The book is edited by the same pair who produced The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (winner of a Hugo Award in 2005).

This volume unfolds the complex relationship between literature and climate by uniquely illuminating historical complexity, diverse viewpoints, and emerging issues.

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.

A comprehensive and accessible introduction to the major themes of this important poet's life and career.