Telling the Story of Climate Change: The German Novel in the Anthropocene

TLDR: The authors discuss the implications of the Anthropocene for literature and literary criticism, and the part which ecocritics can play in critically analyzing cultural representations of our relationship with nature and defining the contribution of imagination, art, and writing to the development of a posthuman identity.

Abstract: This chapter begins by discussing the implications of the Anthropocene for literature and literary criticism, and the part which ecocritics can play in critically analyzing cultural representations of our relationship with nature and defining the contribution of imagination, art, and writing to the development of a posthuman identity. Reviewing studies of climate fiction in English and German to date, it traces the emergence of climate fiction as a twenty-first-century genre and presents a brief overview of 25 German novels published since 1993. Finally, it compares the solutions to problems of form and narrative strategy arrived at by Ilija Trojanow in his lament over our destructive impact on nature in Eistau (2011) with those in Cornelia Franz’s young adult novel, Ins Nordlicht blicken (2012).