The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate

This volume unfolds the complex relationship between literature and climate by uniquely illuminating historical complexity, diverse viewpoints, and emerging issues.

Adeline Johns-Putra (Edited by), Kelly Sultzbach (Edited by)

9781316512166, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 April 2022

300 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm, 0.69 kg

'Scholars and activists interested in the possibilities of recent cli-fi and related genres will find these essays helpful … Recommended.' J. Bilbro, Choice

Investigating the relationship between literature and climate, this Companion offers a genealogy of climate representations in literature while showing how literature can help us make sense of climate change. It argues that any discussion of literature and climate cannot help but be shaped by our current - and inescapable - vantage point from an era of climate change, and uncovers a longer literary history of climate that might inform our contemporary climate crisis. Essays explore the conceptualisation of climate in a range of literary and creative modes; they represent a diversity of cultural and historical perspectives, and a wide spectrum of voices and views across the categories of race, gender, and class. Key issues in climate criticism and literary studies are introduced and explained, while new and emerging concepts are discussed and debated in a final section that puts expert analyses in conversation with each other.

Introduction Adeline Johns-Putra and Kelly Sultzbach
Part I. Historical Shifts in Climate Consciousness: 1. Seasonal processions Sarah Dimick
2. Literal and literary atmospheres Thomas H. Ford
3. Weathers of body and world: Reading difference in literary atmospheres before climate change Jennifer Mae Hamilton
Part II. Current Issues in Climate Change Criticism: 4. Scales: Climate versus embodiment Derek Woods
5. Capitalist cultures: The taste of oil Elizabeth Mazzolini
6. Animals and extinction Fiona Probyn-Rapsey
7. Climate justice and literatures of the global south Chitra Sankaran
Part III. Ways of Telling Climate Stories: 8. Climate theatre: Enacting possible futures Theresa J. May
9. Digital Cli-Fi: Human stories of climate in online and social media John Parham
10. Climate on screen: From doom and disaster to ecotopian visions Alexa Weik von Mossner
Part IV. Dialogic Perspectives on Emerging Questions: Science Fiction and Future Fantasies
11. Ice-sheet collapse and the consensus apocalypse in the science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson Gerry Canavan
12. Solarpunk Gregory Lynall
Collective Climate Action
13. Indigenous and black feminist knowledge-production, speculative science stories, and climate change literature Shelley Streeby
14. More-than-human collectives in richard powers' the overstory and vandana singh's 'entanglement' Kelly Sultzbach
Love Letters to the Planet
15. Meteorology of form Thomas Bristow
16. Perspective-taking, empathy, and virtuality in Jorie Graham's fast Isabel Galleymore
Diverse Indigenous Voices on Climate
17. Climate change and indigenous sovereignty in pacific islanders' writing Hsinya Huang
18. Literary responses to indigenous climate justice and the canadian settler-state Jenny Kerber and Cheryl Lousley
Redefining 'the Real'
19. Transtextual realism for the climatological collective Adeline Johns-Putra
20. Critical Climate Irrealism Sam Solnick.

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA]