Digressions In Deep Time

“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in particular: that deep time thinking and ecocriticism should be considered in conjunction, and that literature and the arts play a vital role in fostering a deep time awareness. Digressions in Deep Time is the first collection of essays which considers the multifarious representations of deep time across literature and the arts, assembling the work of a wide range of prominent scholars whose research frequently engages with temporality and ecocriticism. Featured contributions include work by the Pulitzer-prize winning author John McPhee, who popularised the term deep time in the late seventies, as well as chapters by Richard Irvine (author of An Anthropology of Deep Time), Benjamin Morgan (author of The Outward Mind) and Andrew Tate (author of Apocalyptic Fiction).

Religious Horror and the Ecogothic explores the intersections of Anglophone Christianity and the Ecogothic, a subgenre that explores the ecocritical in Gothic literature, film, and media. Acknowledging the impact of Christian ideologies upon interpretations of human relationships with the environment, the Ecogothic in turn interrogates spiritual identity and humanity’s darker impulses in relation to ecological systems. Through a survey of Ecogothic texts from the eighteenth century to the present day, this book illuminates the ways in which a Christianized understanding of hierarchy, dominion, fear, and sublimity shapes reactions to the environment and conceptions of humanity’s place therein. It interrogates the discourses which inform environmental policy, as well as definitions of the “human” in a rapidly changing world.

How did the earth look in prehistoric times? Scientists and artists collaborated during the half-century prior to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species to produce the first images of dinosaurs and the world they inhabited. Their interpretations, informed by recent fossil discoveries, were the first efforts to represent the prehistoric world based on sources other than the Bible. Martin J. S. Rudwick presents more than a hundred rare illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explore the implications of reconstructing a past no one has ever seen.

With studies of, amongst others, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Charles Baudelaire and Henry James, this landmark collection of essays is a unique and wide-ranging exploration and celebration of the many forms of digression in major works by fifteen of the finest European writers from the early modern period to the present day.

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature looks afresh at major nondramatic texts by Donne, Marvell, Browne, Milton, and Dryden, whose digressive speakers are haunted by personal and public uncertainty. To digress in seventeenth-century England carried a range of meaning associated with deviation or departure from a course, subject, or standard. This book demonstrates that early modern writers trained in verbal contest developed richly labyrinthine voices that captured the ambiguities of political occasion and aristocratic patronage while anatomizing enemies and mourning personal loss. Anne Cotterill turns current sensitivity toward the silenced voice to argue that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and attack for men forced to be competitive yet circumspect as they made their voices heard.

Although digressive discourse constitutes a key feature of Greco-Roman historiography, we possess no collective volume on the matter. The chapters of this book fill this gap by offering an overall view of the use of digressions in Greco-Roman historical prose from its beginning in the 5th century BCE up to the Imperial Era. Ancient historiographers traditionally took as digressions the cases in which they interrupted their focused chronological narration. Such cases include lengthy geographical descriptions, prolepses or analepses, and authorial comments. Ancient historiographers rarely deign to interrupt their narration's main storyline with excursuses which are flagrantly disconnected from it. Instead, they often "coat" their digressions with distinctive patterns of their own thinking, thus rendering them ideological and thematic milestones within an entire work. Furthermore, digressions may constitute pivotal points in the very structure of ancient historical narratives, while ancient historians also use excursuses to establish a dialogue with their readers and to activate them in various ways. All these aspects of digressions in Greco-Roman historiography are studied in detail in the chapters of this volume.

The early history of endometriosis is interwoven with the history of adenomyosis, since it was not until the mid nineteen-twenties that the two conditions were finally separated. A History of Endometriosis provides a detailed reconstruction of the progress made in identifying, describing and treating the condition we call today endometriosis.

Formmust never be taken for granted, but must be created as the work itself is shaped: "The writer works not from a priori ideas about what will happen and what form it will take, but in and through the text." Sukenick, one of our most original contemporary novelists, describes these essays as "the comments of a fiction writer about writing, not those of a critic on what has been written. They are more or less reports on experience--those of one engaged in the ongoing struggle with the angel of form, rather than of one studying its consequences from a cool distance: 'in form, ' not 'on form.'" The difficulty of creative works no longer accessible to traditional reading habits has threatened us with an age of criticism in which interpretation has be­come more imposing than invention. One of the tasks of modern fiction, therefore, is "to displace, energize, and re-embody its criticism--literally to re­unite at with our experience of the text."