Ecocritical Approaches To Literature In French

Ecocriticism is a critical approach that focuses on the representation in literature of the non-human elements of the natural world, a method of inquiry that has been largely limited to literature written in English. The aim of Ecocritical Approaches to Literature in French is twofold: to introduce ecocriticism to scholars of French-language literature, and to open ecocriticism to the vision and voices of French literature.The chapters look at work not only from France, but also from North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The discussions include fiction, poetry, film and pedagogy. The goal of the collection is to demonstrate not only the applicability of ecocritical inquiry to literature in French, but to demonstrate the possibilities of ecocritical theory on the study of French literature, and also for ecocriticism itself. This collection will be a useful resource both for scholars of French-language literature and also for ecocritics who may have had only limited contact with literatures in languages other than English.

In New France and early Canada, young men who ventured into the forest to hunt and trade with Amerindians (coureurs de bois, “runners of the woods”), later traveling in big teams of canoes (voyageurs), were known for their independence. Often described as half-wild themselves, they linked the European and Indian societies, eventually helping to form a new culture with elements of both. From an ecocritical perspective they represent both negative and positive aspects of the human historical trajectory because, in addition to participating in the environmentally abusive fur trade, they also symbolize the way forward through intercultural connections and business relationships. The four novels analyzed here—Joseph-Charles Taché’s Forestiers et voyageurs: Moeurs et légendes canadiennes (1863); Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1916); Léo-Paul Desrosiers’ Les Engagés du Grand Portage (1938); and Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie-la-Charrette (1979)—portray the backwoodsmen operating in a collaborative mode within the realistic context of the need to make money. They entered folklore through the 19th century literary efforts of Taché and others to construct a distinct French Canadian national identity, then in an unstable and continually disrupted process of formation. Their entry into literature necessarily brought their Amerindian business and personal partners, thus making intercultural connections a foundation of the national identity that Taché and others strove to construct and also mirror. As figures in literature, they embody changing ideas of the self and of the cultures and ethnicities that they connect, both physically and in an abstract sense. Because constructions of self-identity result in behavior, studying this dynamic contributes to ecocritical efforts to better understand human behavior toward both ourselves and our environment. The woodsmen and their Amerindian partners occupy the intriguing position of contributing to both damage and greater acceptance of the cultural Other, the latter of which holds the promise of collaboration and joint searches for sustainable solutions. Thus coureurs de bois and voyageurs, far from perfect models, can continue to serve as guides today.

"French Écocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus's ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text's many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Écocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment."--

Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics examines environmental themes and questions about the evolving relationship between humans and animals in nine modern and contemporary French novels. Considering arguments from both environmentalists and ecoskeptics, it concludes that, far from distancing itself from humanism as it often has, environmentalism must embrace an inclusive and ecological humanism.

French Écocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus’s ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text’s many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Écocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment.

Ecocriticism is a mode of interdisciplinary critical inquiry into the relationship between cultural production, society, and the environment. The field advocates for the more-than-human realm as well as for underprivileged human and non-human groups and their perspectives. Taiwan is one of the earliest centers for promoting ecocriticism outside the West and has continued to play a central role in shaping ecocriticism in East Asia. This is the first English anthology dedicated to the vibrant development of ecocriticism in Taiwan. It provides a window to Taiwan’s important contributions to international ecocriticism, especially an emerging “vernacular” trend in the field emphasizing the significance of local perspectives and styles, including non-western vocabularies, aesthetics, cosmologies, and political ideologies. Taiwan's unique history, geographic location, geology, and subtropical climate generate locale-specific, vernacular thinking about island ecology and environmental history, as well as global environmental issues such as climate change, dioxin pollution, species extinction, energy decisions, pollution, and environmental injustice. In hindsight, Taiwan's industrial modernization no longer appears as a success narrative among Asia's “Four Little Dragons,” but as a cautionary tale revealing the brute force entrepreneurial exploitation of the land and the people. In this light, this volume can be seen as a critical response to Taiwan's postcolonial, capitalist-industrial modernity, as manifested in the scholars’ readings of Taiwan's "mountain and river," ocean, animal, and aboriginal (non)fictional narratives, environmental documentaries, and art installations. This volume is endowed with a mixture of ecocosmopolitan and indigenous sensitivities. Though dominated by the Han Chinese ethnic group and its Confucian ideology, Taiwan is a place of complicated ethnic identities and affiliations. The succession of changing colonial and political regimes, made even more complex by the island’s sixteen aboriginal groups and several diasporic subcultures (South Asian immigrants, Western expatriates, and diverse immigrants from the Chinese mainland), has led to an ongoing quest for political and cultural identity. This complexity urges Taiwan-based ecoscholars to pay attention to the diasporic, comparative, and intercultural dimensions of local specificity, either based on their own diasporic experience or the cosmopolitan features of the Taiwanese texts they scrutinize. This cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamic is a key contribution Taiwan has to offer current ecocritical scholarship.

This book expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the non-human world in a broad spectrum of material in French. Scholars from Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States examine the work of writers and thinkers including Michel de Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gilbert Simondon, Michel Serres, Michel Houellebecq, and Éric Chevillard. The diverse approaches in the volume signal a common desire to bring together form and content, politics and aesthetics, theory and practice, under the aegis of the environmental humanities.