The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene

From catastrophe to utopia, the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can speak to the 'Anthropocene'.

This book is for readers interested in how literature tackles climate change, 'petro-culture', extinction, and the proposed 'human' epoch of the Anthropocene. Chapters discuss flooding, pollution, oil, humans, and animals, while revisiting old and new literary forms, including novels, poems, plays, and gaming.The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch marking humanity's alteration of the Earth: its rock structure, environments, atmosphere. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene offers the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can address the social, cultural, and philosophical questions posed by the Anthropocene. This volume addresses the old and new literary forms - from novels, plays, poetry, and essays to exciting and evolving genres such as 'cli-fi', experimental poetry, interspecies design, gaming, weird, ecotopian and petro-fiction, and 'new' nature writing. Studies range from the United States to India, from Palestine to Scotland, while addressing numerous global signifiers or consequences of the Anthropocene: catastrophe, extinction, 'fossil capital', warming, politics, ethics, interspecies relations, deep time, and Earth. This unique Companion offers a compelling account of how to read literature through the Anthropocene and of how literature might yet help us imagine a better world.