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Jesse Oak Taylor

Bio: Jesse Oak Taylor is an academic researcher from University of Washington. The author has contributed to research in topics: Anthropocene & Ecocriticism. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 14 publications receiving 197 citations.

Papers
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Book
23 Mar 2016
TL;DR: The Sky of Our Manufacture as mentioned in this paper explores the emergence of anthropogenic climate change in English literature and argues for the importance of fiction in understanding climate shifts, environmental pollution, and ecological collapse.
Abstract: The smoke-laden fog of London is one of the most vivid elements in English literature, richly suggestive and blurring boundaries between nature and society in compelling ways. In The Sky of Our Manufacture, Jesse Oak Taylor uses the many depictions of the London fog in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novel to explore the emergence of anthropogenic climate change. In the process, Taylor argues for the importance of fiction in understanding climatic shifts, environmental pollution, and ecological collapse. The London fog earned the portmanteau "smog" in 1905, a significant recognition of what was arguably the first instance of a climatic phenomenon manufactured by modern industry. Tracing the path to this awareness opens a critical vantage point on the Anthropocene, a new geologic age in which the transformation of humanity into a climate-changing force has not only altered our physical atmosphere but imbued it with new meanings. The book examines enduringly popular works--from the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries to works by Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf--alongside newspaper cartoons, scientific writings, and meteorological technologies to reveal a fascinating relationship between our cultural climate and the sky overhead.

67 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The most striking thing about reviewing the field of Victorian ecocriticism is that there is so little of it as discussed by the authors, which is all the more perplexing given that ecocritical work on Romanticism and nineteenth-century American literature is so profuse.
Abstract: The most striking thing about reviewing the field of Victorian ecocriticism is that there is so little of it. This relative absence is all the more perplexing given that ecocritical work on Romanticism and nineteenth-century American literature is so profuse. Thoreau and Wordsworth remain the most-discussed authors in a field that was in many respects inaugurated by Jonathan Bate's Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (1991) and Lawrence Buell's The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture (1995). Romanticism remains the point of departure for some of the most influential studies in the field, including those like Timothy Morton's Ecology Without Nature (2009) that challenge many of its core precepts. Meanwhile, ecocriticism has expanded to include many other periods and regions, with collections ranging from The Ecocritical Shakespeare (2011) to Postcolonial Ecologies (2011), and unsurprisingly, a strong turn toward the contemporary.

29 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The theory of evolution was poetry before it became science, each time with a Darwin behind the pen as discussed by the authors, and the relationship between Charles Darwin and his grandfather Erasmus has long proven a conundrum.
Abstract: The theory of evolution was poetry before it became science, each time with a Darwin behind the pen. The relationship between Charles Darwin and his grandfather Erasmus has long proven a conundrum ...

17 citations


Cited by
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Sep 1989
TL;DR: We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now as mentioned in this paper, and book is the window to open the new world.
Abstract: We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

5,075 citations

01 Apr 2016
TL;DR: The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964.
Abstract: Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system.

1,173 citations

01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The authors put histories of capitalism in conversation with the histories of the evolution of earth and human beings, and explored the limits of historical understanding by exploring the conversation between recorded histories and deep histories.
Abstract: The science of climate change has important influences on humanist histories of human beings.What scientists have said about climate change challenges not only the ideas about the human that usually sustain the discipline of history but also the analytic strategies that postcolonial and postimperial historians have deployed in the last two decades in response to the postwar scenario of decolonization and globalization.The current construction of historical knowledge presupposes a loss of the old distinction between human and natural histories.The idea of the Anthropocene which considers humans as a geological force severely qualifies humanist histories.This requires us to put histories of capitalism in conversation with the histories of the evolution of earth and human beings.Such conversation between recorded histories and deep histories is one process of exploring the limits of historical understanding.

561 citations

01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: Hardy as mentioned in this paper examined Hardy's Tess of the D' Urbervilles in relation to the Victorian economic situation and sexual ideology, revealing the image of active Tess, who would be a subjective human being of strong vitality and human will.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine Hardy`s Tess of the D` Urbervilles in relation to the Victorian economic situation and sexual ideology. In Victorian age, women were only servant and attendant and administering angel for the male. Hardy understood the difficulties of woman in patriarchal society and tried to describe whether a woman as an individual subject could be accepted like a man as a social being. So he chose as his heroine not Victorian female streotype but woman who have feministic aspirations although she is frustrated in social process. The social process is one of class and communal separation in the Wessex country as the capitalist farming. Tess suffer from the poverty of her family, but she shows much greatness through her life. She is always innocent in mind, sincere in attitude, patient in hard life and self sacrificing. She struggles against appalling circumstances. Hardy illuminates the faults of the sexual ideology, rigid religion and class by the relationships of Angel, Alec. Tess lose her virginity by debauched Alec. But she leave him and live firmly as an unwed mother. And she is deserted because of her past by Angel who is enslaved by the convention and cold society. Through suffering, Tess learn to live her own life by free will. Tess is different from the typical Victorian heroines who usually fit into the adaptive role of woman imposed on them by society. She overcome all difficulties and try to live her own life freely. She is vivid, vigorous, even dominating despite of many hardships. As the subtitle ` A Pure Woman` implies, Tess is pure in natural law nevertheless she committed murder. Hardy saw Tess not as fatally doomed characters or mere victims of Victorian sexual ideology. He saw Tess as complex human being whose aspirations are frustrated in the social process but who remain self-contained and even heroic. And he criticizes the absurd sexual ideology and hypocrisy of the Victorian age, revealing the image of active Tess, who would be a subjective human being of strong vitality and human will. In this sense, we would call him a humanistic meliorist or pre-feminist.

129 citations