............................................................................................................................ ii

/pdf/odor-and-power-in-the-americas-olfactory-consciousness-from-24cl2s3nsz.pdf

Odor and Power in the Americas: Olfactory Consciousness from Columbus to Emancipation

This article provides an overview of climate change in literature, focusing on the representation of climate change in Anglophone fiction. It then evaluates the way in which these fictional representations are critiqued in literary studies, and considers the extent to which the methods and tools that are currently employed are adequate to this new critical task. We explore how the complexity of climate change as both scientific and cultural phenomenon demands a corresponding degree of complexity in fictional representation. For example, when authors represent climate change as a global, networked, and controversial phenomenon, they move beyond simply employing the environment as a setting and begin to explore its impact on plot and character, producing unconventional narrative trajectories and innovations in characterization. Then, such creative complexity asks of literary scholars a reassessment of methods and approaches. For one thing, it may require a shift in emphasis from literary fiction to genre fiction. It also particularly demands that environmental criticism, or ecocriticism, moves beyond its long-standing interest in concepts of 'nature' and 'place', to embrace a new understanding of the local in relation to the global. We suggest, too, that there are synergies to be forged between these revisionary moves in ecocriticism and developments in literary critical theory and historicism, as these critical modes begin to deal with climate change and reimagine themselves in turn. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Climate change in literature and literary criticism

Recently, a number of contemporary women writers have published fictions of apocalypse, including Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake [2003] and its sequel The Year of the Flood [2009]), Jeannette Wint

Future Shock: Rewriting the Apocalypse in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Utopia and dystopia, providing readers with diverging possibilities future, have always given them tools to rethink society. This is so because, even though texts are inserted within a context, they are also empowered with the possibility of shaping new contexts – literature is informed and informs reality, working as a receptacle and as a response to social and political turmoil. Bearing that in mind, this study aims at making out how Animal Farm (ORWELL, 1945) and Fahrenheit 451 (BRADBURY, 1953) react to the epistemes with which we, as readers, come equipped. What both novellas demonstrate is that there is the possibility of accepting or the possibility of fighting – as long as we become aware that the latter option is a feasible one. Addressing issues such as that of subjects’ alienation and/or of their lack of critical abilities to interact fruitfully with one another as to change their condition, these narratives are a glimpse of the political arena whereto literary discourses might be taken. After all, to think politically about literary productions might be a choice, but the fact that literature per se is a political institution is not.

/pdf/of-course-i-m-happy-an-analysis-of-animal-farm-orwell-1945-25amv2eak3.pdf

“Of course i’m happy”: an analysis of Animal farm (Orwell, 1945) and Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury, 1953) dystopian modernity

The developing knowledge of life sciences is at the crux of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as she examines human promise gone awry in a near-future dystopia. This thesis examines aspects of posthumanism, ecocriticism, and feminism in the novel's scientific, cultural, and environmental projections. Through the trope of extinction, Atwood's text foregrounds the effects of human exceptionalism and instrumentalism in relation to the natural world, and engenders an analysis of human identity through its biological and cultural aspects. Extinction thus serves as a metaphor for both human development and human excesses, redefining the idea of human within the context of vulnerable species. Oryx and Crake reveals humanity's organic connections with non-human others through interspecies gene-splicing and the ensuing hybridity. In this perspective, Atwood's text provides a dialogue on humankind's alienation from the natural world and synchronic connections to the animal other, and poses timely questions for twenty-first century consumerism, globalism, and humanist approaches to nature. The loss of balance provoked by the apocalyptic situation in Oryx and Crake challenges commonplace attitudes toward beneficial progress. This imbalance signals the need for a new narrative: A consilient reimagining of humanity's role on earth as an integrated organism rather than an intellectual singularity.

/pdf/un-natural-bodies-endangered-species-and-embodied-others-in-22421gfiiu.pdf

(un)natural Bodies, Endangered Species, And Embodied Others In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake

Margaret Atwood's 2003 speculative novel, Oryx and Crake, incorporates into a futuristic tale disparate elements taken from current ecological concerns. Her clever intermingling of utopian science with its dystopian effects makes this novel a particularly rewarding text through which to engage with current ecological philosophies, particularly those developed by Val Plumwood and other thinkers interested in how ecological thinking can suggest an ethic of respect for the Other. This paper analyses how Atwood constantly shifts our perceptions between that which appears utopian and that which seems dystopian in the novel's setting. This allows for an examination of the fragile nature of an ecological ethic of care in the kind of post-modern world Atwood envisages. Furthermore, by calling into question the utopian dreams of the scientist Crake in the novel, Atwood engages with two significant areas in the ecocritical debate – instrumentalism and the opposition of ‘human culture’ with ‘nature’. This p...

Human/nature: ecological philosophy in margaret atwood's oryx and crake

The second novel in Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos science fiction series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, is marked out as different from the rest of the series by its fable-like qualities. The novel appears to narrate a quest for a kind of balance or harmony between the various Zones. This paper sets out to analyse the novel in relation to ecofeminist aesthetics, assessing what it is that Zones Three and Four learn from each other by tracing the relationship between Yori, a horse, and the queen of Zone Three, Al·Ith. Their relationship allows for a shift in the attitudes of both the king of Zone Four and Al·Ith herself, leading to the resolution of the novel, and the restoration of harmony to the fictional world Lessing creates. It is this shift that provides the focus for an assessment of the novel in relation to ecofeminist and ecocritical theory.

The Metaphor of the Horse in Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five : An Ecofeminist Question?

Shakespeare and Africa : The Dark Lady of His Sonnets Revamped and Other Africa-Related Associations, Robert F. Fleissner : book review

This thesis is a study of the first four books of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It accounts for the widespread success of the novels by examining their publication and marketing histories, and their literary achievement as narratives including a sophisticated mix of generic traditions. Chapter One looks at the popularity of the novels, comparing their material production and marketing by Rowling’s English language publishers: Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States of America. The publisher’s influence on the public perception of each book is demonstrated by comparative study of its mode of illustration and layout. Further, the design of the books is linked to their strategic marketing and branding within the literary world. The second chapter considers Rowling’s debt to the school story. It concentrates first on the history of this relatively short-lived genre, briefly discussing its stereotypical features and values. Traditional elements of setting and characterisation are then examined to show how the Harry Potter novels present a value system which, though apparently oldfashioned, still has an ethical standpoint designed to appeal to the modern reader. Chapter Three focuses on the characterisation of Harry as a hero-figure, especially on how the influence of classical and medieval texts infuses Rowling’s portrayal of Harry as a hero in the chivalric mode. The episodes of “quest” and “test” in each book illustrate specifically how he learns the values of selflessness, loyalty, mercy and fairness. Chapter Four surveys the contribution of modern fantasy writing to the series. It shows how Rowling creates a secondary world that allows us to perceive magic as a metaphorical representation of power. This focus on the relationship between magic and power in turn has a bearing on our assessment of the author’s moral stance.

The Harry Potter phenomenon literary production, generic traditions, and the question of values

"A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy

Jayne Glover

Papers

Human/nature: ecological philosophy in margaret atwood's oryx and crake

The Metaphor of the Horse in Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five : An Ecofeminist Question?

Shakespeare and Africa : The Dark Lady of His Sonnets Revamped and Other Africa-Related Associations, Robert F. Fleissner : book review

The Harry Potter phenomenon literary production, generic traditions, and the question of values

"A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy