Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel

Analysing how contemporary fiction explores climate change, Johns-Putra argues that literature can help us understand our obligations to the future.

Adeline Johns-Putra (Author)

9781108427371, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 March 2019

196 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.5 cm, 0.43 kg

'Climate change is not simply one more topic to be taken up by novelists. As Johns-Putra argues so powerfully, climate change at once demands new modes of thinking about time and agency, at the same time as it brings to the fore what has always marked the novel: the problem of finding meaning in the various ends (and endings) that direct and interrupt life. This book is essential and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in how we might imagine the world in the wake of the Anthropocene.' Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State University

Climate change is becoming a major theme in the contemporary novel, as authors reflect concerns in wider society. Given the urgency and enormity of the problem, can literature (and the emotional response it provokes) play a role in answering the complex ethical issues that arise because of climate change? This book shows that conventional fictional techniques should not be disregarded as inadequate to the demands of climate change; rather, fiction has the potential to challenge us, emotionally and ethically, to reconsider our relationship to the future. Adeline Johns-Putra focuses on the dominant theme of intergenerational ethics in the contemporary novel: that is, the idea of our obligation to future generations as a basis for environmental action. Rather than simply framing parenthood and posterity in sentimental terms, the climate change novel uses their emotional appeal to critique their anthropocentricism and identity politics, offering radical alternatives instead.

Introduction
1. The ethics of posterity and the climate change novel
2. The limits of parental care ethics: Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Maggie Gee's The Ice People
3. Overpopulation and motherhood environmentalism: Edan Lepucki's California and Liz Jensen's The Road
4. Identity, ethical agency, and radical posterity: Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods and Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army
5. Science, utopianism, and ecocentric posterity: Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Science in the Capital' and Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour
Conclusion: the sense of no ending.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]