| Author |
Trexler, Adam; Johns-Putra, Adeline |
| Year |
2011 |
| First published |
2011 |
| Journal |
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2 2
|
| Pages |
185 to 200 |
| Volume |
2 |
| Keywords |
two culture debate, habitat at risk, biodiversity/extinction, biology, ecology, natural history, climate change, dystopia, risk to society (role of science) |
Titles discussed
Abstract
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 andtools 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.
