Death-Facing Ecology in Contemporary British and North American Environmental Crisis Fiction

Download or read book Death-Facing Ecology in Contemporary British and North American Environmental Crisis Fiction written by Louise Squire and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a burgeoning of novels that respond to the environmental issues we currently face. Among these, Louise Squire defines environmental crisis fiction as concerned with a range of environmental issues and with the human subject as a catalyst for these issues. She argues that this fiction is characterized by a thematic use of "death," through which it explores a "crisis" of both environment and self. Squire refers to this emergent thematic device as "death-facing ecology". This device enables this fiction to engage with a range of theoretical ideas and with popular notions of death and the human condition as cultural phenomena of the modern West. In doing so, this fiction invites its readers to consider how humanity might begin to respond to the crisis.