Ecocritical Theory ─ New European Approaches

Scholars of English and comparative literature and philosophy draw on traditions of thinking about nature and culture, and about the role of literature and the arts in shaping this thinking, that arose in European Romanticism, but focus primarily on thinkers of the 20th century as they explore European dimensions of a school of thought that began in the US. They cover memory and politics; culture, society, and anthropology; phenomenology; ethics and otherness; and models from physics and biology. Among the topics are avant-garde nostalgia and hedonist renewal, the social theory of Norbert Elias and the question of the nonhuman world, Merleau-Ponty's ecophenomenology, the ecological Irigaray, and cybernetics and social systems theory. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Axel Goodbody, Professor of German Studies and European Culture at the University of Bath, is the author ofNature, Technology, and Cultural Change in Twentieth-Century German Literature: The Challenge of Ecocriticism and associate editor of the journalEcozon@. Kate Rigby, Associate Professor in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University, is the author ofTopographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (Virginia) and coeditor of the journalPhilosophy Activism Nature.