
The Modernist Anthropocene
Nonhuman Life and Planetary Change in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes
Peter Adkins(Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 12. February 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
252 pages
978-1-4744-8197-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Modernist Anthropocene examines how modernist writers forged new and innovative ways of responding to rapidly changing planetary conditions and emergent ideas about nonhuman life, environmental change and the human species. Drawing on ecocritical analysis, posthumanist theory, archival research and environmental history, this book resituates key works of modernist fiction within the ecological moment of the early twentieth century, a period in which new configurations of the relationship between human life and the natural world were migrating between the sciences, philosophy and literary culture. The author makes the case that the early twentieth century is pivotal in our understanding of the Anthropocene both as a planetary epoch and a critical concept. In doing so, he positions James Joyce, Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf as theorists of the modernist Anthropocene, showing how their oeuvres are shaped by, and actively respond to, changing ideas about the nonhuman that continue to reverberate today.
Reviews / Votes
Thanks to The Modernist Anthropocene, the early twentieth century can no longer be mistaken for a time of unselfconscious acceleration and extraction. Peter Adkins shows us how modernist novels published in those decades were incubating posthumanist thought and theorising the Anthropocene even before the word's first use in 1922. Essential. -- Paul K. Saint-Amour, University of PennsylvaniaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
7 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 156 mm
Width: 235 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
390 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-8197-7 (9781474481977)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Peter Adkins is Lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Modernist Anthropocene: Nonhuman Life and Planetary Change in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes (2022) and co-editor of Virginia Woolf, Europe and Peace: Aesthetics and Theory (2020). He has written widely on modernism, the environment and posthumanism.
Content
List of Figures Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Matter of Politics in the Novels of James Joyce
2. James Joyce and the Revenge of Gaia
3. The Beastly Writing of Djuna Barnes
4. Sex, Nature and Animal Life in Djuna Barnes's Ryder
5. The Sympathetic Climate of Virginia Woolf's Orlando
6. The Disturbing Future of Virginia Woolf's Late Writing
Fallout: Modernism in the Nuclear Anthropocene
Bibliography
Introduction
1. The Matter of Politics in the Novels of James Joyce
2. James Joyce and the Revenge of Gaia
3. The Beastly Writing of Djuna Barnes
4. Sex, Nature and Animal Life in Djuna Barnes's Ryder
5. The Sympathetic Climate of Virginia Woolf's Orlando
6. The Disturbing Future of Virginia Woolf's Late Writing
Fallout: Modernism in the Nuclear Anthropocene
Bibliography