Climate and American Literature

This book revaluates American literary culture through the lens of historical climate representations, as well as recent climate science.

Michael Boyden (Edited by)

9781108484879, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 March 2021

400 pages
23 x 15 x 3 cm, 0.73 kg

'Recommended.' J. Bilbro, Choice Magazine

Climate has infused the literary history of the United States, from the writings of explorers and conquerors, over early national celebrations of the American climate, to the flowering of romantic nature writing. This volume traces this complex semantic history in American thought and literature to examine rhetorical and philosophical discourses that continue to propel and constrain American climate perceptions today. It explores how American literature from its inception up until the present engages with the climate, both real and perceived. Climate and American Literature attends to the central place that the climate has historically occupied in virtually all aspects of American life, from public health and medicine, over the organization of the political system and the public sphere, to the culture of sensibility, aesthetics and literary culture. It details American inflections of climate perceptions over time to offer revealing new perspectives on one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Introduction Michael Boyden
Part I. Climate and its Discontents: 1. The climate history of North America Dagomar Degroot
2. Climate theories Lauren LaFauci
3. Climate and civilization David N. Livingstone
4. Climate and race Susan Scott Parrish
Part II. American Literary Climates: 5. Climate and American Indian literature Amy Hamilton
6. Colonial climates Michael Boyden
7. The degeneration thesis Timothy Sweet
8. The state of the air in post-revolutionary America Julia Dauer
9. The higher latitudes of the American renaissance Andrew McMurry
10. Climate and the American west Sylvan Goldberg
11. Fictions of health after miasma Don James McLaughlin
12. Naturalism, regionalism, and climate (In)determinism Lynn Wardley
13. American modernisms and climatology Matthew Griffiths
14. Postmodern climates David Watson
15. Frontiers of a shrinking world: recent American climate fiction Sarah Dimick
Part III. New Lines of Inquiry: 16. Climate and the environmental humanities Michael Ziser
17. The anthropocenic sublime: a critique Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
18. Climate and the new materialisms Hannes Bergthaller
19. A match made in hell: climate change and neoliberalism Christian Parenti
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Pollution & threats to the environment [RNP], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary theory [DSA]