Dark Nature

Anti-Pastoral Essays in American Literature and Culture

Contributions by Frederico Bellini, Gina Claywell, Jesse Curran, Sarah Daw, Monika M. Elbert, Isabel Galleymore, Mark Henderson, Joseph Heumann, Elizabeth Kubek, David LaRocca Visiting Scholar, Department of English, Cornell University, Matthew Masucci, T. Mera Moore Lafferty, Robin Murray, Rachel Paparone, Dana Prodoehl, Jennifer Schell, Anette Vandsoe Edited by Richard Schneider

Publication date:

04 October 2016

Length of book:

290 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498528115

In The Ecological Thought, eco-philosopher Timothy Morton has argued for the inclusion of “dark ecology” in our thinking about nature. Dark ecology, he argues, puts hesitation, uncertainty, irony, and thoughtfulness back into ecological thinking.” The ecological thought, he says, should include “negativity and irony, ugliness and horror.” Focusing on this concept of “dark ecology” and its invitation to add an anti-pastoral perspective to ecocriticism, this collection of essays on American literature and culture offers examples of how a vision of nature’s darker side can create a fuller understanding of humanity’s relation to nature. Included are essays on canonical American literature, on new voices in American literature, and on non-print American media. This is the first collection of essays applying the “dark ecology” principle to American literature.

Table of Contents

Richard J. Schneider, “Introduction”
Dark Nature and the American Canon

Gina Claywell, “’Famine is a Frightful Monster’: Constructing Nature in Colonial Road Trips by Sarah Kemble Knight and William Byrd II”
Elizabeth Kubek, “‘Passage into New Forms’: The Negative Ecologies of Charles Brockden Brown”
Mark Henderson, “Dutchmen on the Brink: The Ghost Ship as Avatar of Dark (American) Nature in Poe’s ‘MS. Found in a Bottle.’”
Jesse Curran, “Thoreau’s Week and the Work of the Eco-lament”
Frederico Bellini, “The Gnostic Dark Side of Nature in Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy: Carrying the Fire out of Arcadia”
Jennifer Schell, “Fiendish Fumaroles and Malevolent Mud Pots: The EcoGothic Aspects of Owen Wister’s Yellowstone Stories”
Monika M. Elbert, “Frontiersmen, Robber Barons, Architects, and the Darkening Aesthetics of Nature in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady”

Dark Nature and New Voices

Richard J. Schneider, “The Dark Side of Two Nature Writing Genres: Nature Noir and Wisconsin Death Trip”

9. Sarah Daw, “The ‘dark ecology’ of the Bomb: Writing the Nuclear as a part of
‘Nature’ in Cold War American Literature”
10. T. Mera Moore Lafferty, “The Poetry of Adele Ne Jame: Dark Nature, Cosmic Justice, and the Communion of Paradoxology”
11. Rachel Paparone, “Anti-pastoral Imagery and the Search for Cajun Identity”
12. Dana Prodoehl, “(Dark) Nature and Masculinity: The Anti-Pastoralism of Benjamin Percy’s The Wilding”
13. Matthew Masucci, “Hyperobjects, Plant Entelechy, and the Horror of Eco-Colonization in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy”
14. Isabel Galleymore, “’what’s the world but shine//and seem’: ‘Radical Kitsch’ and Mark Doty’s Environmental Poetics”

Dark Nature and the Media
15. Anette Vandsoe, “Listening to the Dark Side of Nature”
16. Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann, “Eco-Horror Cinematic Techniques in Television Nature Documentaries: Monsters Inside Me and the Dark Side of Nature”
17. David LaRocca, “Hunger in the Heart of Nature: Werner Herzog’s Anti-Sentimental Dispatches from the American Wilderness (Reflections on Grizzly Man)”

Dark Nature [is a] signicant [contribution] to the existing scholarship on ecology and nature, for [it] explore[s] what we tend to characterize as the horrors of the natural world that, in turn, are impossible to neglect today, when the planet’s climate is changing so drastically. [This book] prove[s] the necessity of ecocriticism to concentrate on nature’s darkness, and not just on its pastoralism. Only having fully understood nature as both light and dark, welcoming and abhorring, comforting and punishing, humanity will be able to conceive of its own role in the natural world and view the environment as a living and constantly changing organism. . . Dark Nature will thus be of interest to scholars and students in environmental humanities as well as to general audiences who want to understand the duality of nature and why it is so important to know about and accept nature’s darkness.