1st Edition
Nature, Environment and Poetry Ecocriticism and the poetics of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
Introduction 1. Ecotrickster: Nature and Religion in Crow 2. Human History and Environmental Time: Postmodern nature in Heaney's bog poems 3. Technology and Landscape: Counter and recovery poems in Elmet 4. Colonised Nature: Heaney and postcolonial ecocriticism 5. Ecosemiotics: An anti-anthropocentrism in Hughes's animal poems 6. 'The Place in Me': Heaney, globalisation and sense of place Conclusions: Hughes, Heaney and the different natures of ecopoetics
Biography
Susanna Lidström is a postdoctoral researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, with the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
"After the theoretical upheavals of the past five years or so, what is now needed in ecocritical scholarship is a book that takes account of these developments and applies them to texts we thought we knew. This is exactly what Lidström does, in an admirably clear, compelling style." –Adeline Johns-Putra, Chair, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland
"Lidström has written a lucid, wide-ranging ecocritical study of the most distinguished poets of the British Isles in the late 20th century. Her chief innovation is to orchestrate a subtle interplay between the poets’ collections and the theoretical frameworks they seem to require, rather than bashing them all into a single ecopoetic mould. The result is wonderfully illuminating."–Greg Garrard, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, USA
"Susanna Lidström creates a fascinating and timely study of Hughes and Heaney as ecopoets. Arguing that environmental issues have ‘changed the mind of poetry’, she draws exciting new insights from ecosemiotics, postcolonial ecocriticism, and theories of local and global to create an innovative and important new work."–Yvonne Reddick, University of Central Lancashire, UK
"Lidström’s clear and accessible study illuminates two versions of ecopoetics, one committed to anti-anthropocentric revelation of what lies beyond social and cultural constructions of nature, the other invested in the intertwining of nature and culture. Examining the poetry of Hughes and Heaney through six distinct methodological and thematic lenses, she valuably highlights the diversity of contemporary ecocritical practices."–Lynn Keller, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
