Overview
- Winner of the 2021 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize
- Situates literary scholarship within the broader energy discourses
- Contributes to the developing field of the energy humanities
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Novel Ecologies draws on energy concepts to revisit some of our favorite books—Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The War of the Worlds—and the ways these shape our sense of ourselves as ecological beings. Barri J. Gold regards the laws of thermodynamics not solely as a set of physical principles, but also as a cultural and conceptual form that we can use to reimagine our historically vexed relationship to the natural world. Beginning with an examination of the parallel inceptions of energy and ecology in the mid-nineteenth century, this book considers the question of how we may better read and interpret our world, developing a recipe for experimental reading and insisting upon the importance of literary studies in a world driving to ecological catastrophe.
Reviews
“This book brilliantly reveals how science and the humanities have been shaped by the tendency to understand systems as closed, which, in turn, has limited ecological thinking. Gold uses concepts from energy science to develop a remarkable and original ecological reading practice. Modeling an ecological thinking that promotes openness and entanglement, Gold suggests that the concept of energy can provide forms for alternative ways of thinking the world. The elegant readings of this booknot only offer fresh ways to approach nineteenth-century novels but also persuasively demonstrate that the humanities and Victorian studies in particular are vital for confronting contemporary problems like climate change and anti-ecological thinking.” (Sarah C. Alexander, Associate Professor of English, The University of Vermont, USA)
“Barri Gold's eminently readable new book builds on her previous work in bridging the sciences and humanities. The first half of the book provides scientific, historical, and theoretical contexts that underpin the ‘ecologically-informed readings’ of familiar nineteenth-century novels in the second half. Gold's enviable skill is in presenting complex ideas so that they are easily understood. I've taught excerpts from her chapters on Jane Eyre and Great Expectations in undergraduate courses: they work well as stand-alone arguments, while advanced students will appreciate the attention to historical and theoretical contexts in thefirst half.” (Jennifer Camden, Associate Chair and Professor, English, University of Indianapolis, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Barri J. Gold is Professor and Chair of English at Muhlenberg College, USA, and author of ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science (2010).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Book Subtitle: Novel Ecologies
Authors: Barri J. Gold
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68604-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-68603-1Published: 11 April 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-68606-2Published: 12 April 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-68604-8Published: 10 April 2021
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 215
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Literary Theory, History of Science, History, general, Cultural Studies, Science and Technology Studies