1st Edition
Interrogating Eco-Literature and Sustainable Development Theory, Text, and Practice
This book examines the issues of ecological crisis and sustainable development through critical reading of literary texts. By analysing writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Amitav Ghosh, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hannah Arendt, and Lawrence Buell, it discusses themes like oriental representations of ecological consciousness; environmental evocations; misogyny and its postmodern creations; tracing nature’s footprints in English literature; statelessness and consequent environmental refugees; ecocriticism and comics; and, absolute trust in the goodness of the earth.
The volume argues that within the ambit of debates between ecological threats and socio-economic concerns, culture plays a vital role particularly in relation to parameters such as identity and engagement, memory and projection, gender and generations, inquiry and learning, wellbeing and health.
This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, English literature, social anthropology, gender studies, sustainable development, environmental studies, ecological studies, development studies, and post-colonial studies.
Introduction - Of Anthropocene: Far End of the Eco-critical Trajectory
Ashok K. Mohapatra
Part I. Through Various Lenses: Theorizing Ecology
Chapter 1. Tagore's Red Oleanders: Tracing a Root of Socialist Eco-feminism
Nilanjana Chatterjee
Chapter 2. Dialectics of Nature and Culture
Shruti Das
Chapter 3. Ecocriticism and Comics
Pinaki De
Chapter 4. Dialectics of Environment through the Prism of Fiction: An Overview of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Sujit Malick
Chapter 5. From Ecocriticism to Omninaturalism: The Green Consciousness and Intercorporeality
Sourav Nag
Chapter 6. Exploring Eco-Criticism and Eco-Feminism A Re-reading of Wide Sargasso Sea
Mohana Das
Chapter 7. Studying ‘Cli-fi’: Thinking about the ‘Unthinkable’
Sonam Jalan
Part II. Ecology and Literary Representation
Chapter 8. Gerard Manley Hopkins—A Priest of Ecology
Goutam Buddha Sural
Chapter 9. Statelessness, Environmental Refugee and ‘The Law of Humanity’: Reading Hannah Arendt, Lawrence Buell and Amitav Ghosh together
Sajalkumar Bhattacharya
Chapter 10. The Rhetoric of Space: Space and Human Behaviour in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and The Scarlet Letter
Pradipta Sengupta
Chapter 11. Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: An Ecocritical/Ecofeminist Reading of Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple
Anindita Chatterjee
Chapter 12. Misogyny and Its Postmodern Creation: A Material Eco-feminist Reading of Harold Pinter's Select Female Characters
Saikat Chakraborty
Chapter 13. The Unnatural Nature: Edgar Allan Poe and Eco-horror
Riman Rakshit
Part III. Development and Sustainability
Chapter 14. Development and Sustainability: Understanding the Duality of Expectations through a Study of Literature
Abhishek Bhattacharya and Dr. Sudipa Chowdhury
Chapter 15. Sustainable Development and Ecological Perspectives: Improvement in Water and Sanitation
Chandan Bandyopadhyay
Chapter 16. Analysis of Ambient Air Quality of Asansol Sub-division and It’s Sustainable Solution
Sarbendu Bikash Dhar
Chapter 17. Tracing Nature’s Footprints in English Literature: An Ecocritical Perspective
Arunima Karmakar
Biography
Sharbani Banerjee Mukherjee is Associate Professor of English in the Postgraduate Department of English at Trivenidevi Bhalotia College, Raniganj, West Bengal, India. An alumnus of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, her PhD thesis was on Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. Her areas of interest include American literature, post-fifties British literature, Postcolonial Studies, Partition literature, Ecocriticism and Gender Studies. She has co-edited The American Novel from Hawthorne to Heller: Cultural Contexts and Critical Perspectives (2019). She is Associate Editor of Literary Oracle, journal of the Department of English, Berhampur University, Odisha.
Soumitra Roy is Associate Professor of English at Kazi Nazrul Islam Mahavidyalaya, Asansol, West Bengal, India, and has a teaching experience of over 21 years. He is an alumnus of Burdwan University, West Bengal. His areas of interest include postcolonial studies, film studies, and sports literature. His publications include “Consciousness of a Modern Indian Nation: Analysing Gender Violence from New Delhi to Kamduni”. He is also a reviewer of Literary Oracle.
