Description
Book SynopsisPersuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis continues Patrick D. Murphy''s focus on transversal ecocritical praxis by considering literature and cinema in terms of the persuasive force of aesthetic activity and whether or not artistic production and its criticism can be considered forms of activism. Murphy argues that literature and other forms of aesthetic production hold out the promise of being able to move some individuals deeply through both affective and intellectual engagement in ways that facilitate ideological reflection. To analyze aesthetic production ecocritically requires a transversal orientation in order to work continuously at accommodating a vast array of often seemingly disparate perspectives, disciplines, and contextual information, as well as the ever changing thematic, plot, setting, and contextual elements of the aesthetic works under consideration and the responses of changing audiences through time and across cultures. Murphy demonstrates this approach through prese
Trade ReviewPersuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis offers some glimpses of new routes or questions for study, as well as a sizeable range of texts to expand the bibliography of ecocriticism… Murphy makes a strong theoretical case that ecocriticism should take a ranging and self-consciously diversity of approaches. * Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Continuing the Transversal Ecocritical Praxis Project Chapter One: The Question of Aesthetic Praxis: If Literature and Art are Propaganda, What is Ecocritical Analysis? Chapter Two: Back to Concerns about the Future: Susan Fenimore Cooper and Rural Hours Chapter Three: Pessimism, Optimism, Human Inertia and Anthropogenic Climate Change Chapter Four: Directing the Weather, Producing the Climate Chapter Five: Buying Agriculture, Selling Starvation and the Failure of Business-as-usual in a Dystopic Future Chapter Six: Viewing the Far Fields through an Ecofeminist Subsistence Perspective in an Age of Land Grabs Chapter Seven: From Consumables to Sustenance through an Ecofeminist Sufficiency Reorientation Chapter Eight: Listening for a Way out Through a Deep Yearning for a Resounding Relationship Chapter Nine: The Role of Women and Gender Equality in Creating Ecotopia Afterword: Directions for Future Research Appendix: Framing the Subject: An Interview by the editors of Frame Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
