Lexington Books Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (Ecocritical Theory and Practice)

Feminist Ecocriticism examines the interplay of women and nature as seen through literary theory and criticism, drawing on insights from such diverse fields as chaos theory and psychoanalysis, while examining genres ranging from nineteenth-century sentimental literature to contemporary science fiction. The book explores the central claim of ecofeminism-that there is a connection between environmental degradation and the subordination of women-with the goal of identifying and fostering liberatory alternatives. Feminist Ecocriticism analyzes the work of such diverse women writers as Rachel Carson, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Mary Shelley. By including chapters from a comparable number of women and men, this book dispels the notion that ecofeminism is relevant to and used by only female scholars. After uncovering the oppressive dichotomies of male/female and nature/culture that underlie contemporary environmental problems, Feminist Ecocriticism focuses specifically on emancipatory strategies employed by ecofeminist literary critics as antidotes, asking what our lives might be like as those strategies become increasingly successful in overcoming oppression. Thus, ecofeminism is not limited to the critique of literature, but also helps identify and articulate liberatory ideals that can be actualized in the real world, in the process transforming everyday life. Providing an alternative to rugged individualism, for example, ecofeminist literature promotes a more fulfilling sense of interrelationship with both community and the land. In the process of exploring literature from ecofeminist perspectives, the book reveals strategies of emancipation that have already begun to give rise to more hopeful ecological narratives. Feminist Ecocriticism provides a novel integration of two important strands of contemporary literary criticism that have often failed to make contact: feminist criticism and ecocriticism. The openness of both feminist criticism and ecocriticism to multiple, even incompatible perspectives, without the insistence on unitary definitions of their fields, has given rise to a new hybrid discipline: feminist ecocriticism. Review Feminist Ecocriticism: Women, Environment, and Literature offers readings of a variety of texts, from science fiction to Barbara Kingsolver's novels, from Rachel Carson's nonfiction to the late nineteenth-century French novelist J. K. Huysmans. . . .[Particularly, ] Lockwood's contribution provides a constructive view of ecofeminism from the perspective of ecophilosophy and literature, which is furthermore valuable as he places the essays in a more recent critical and scholarly context.-- "English Studies" In summary this book discusses the different environmental and feminist theories. Feminist and environmental theories have shaped the perspectives of how the current generation understand feminism as well as environmental problems. . . .Ecofeminism seeks to identify the relationship between women and nature. This point is clearly highlighted in all the chapters of the book; women are viewed as nurturing and loving towards the environment while men are shown as being only concerned about dominating the environment and caring about their own well- being.-- "Journal Of International Women's Studies" In Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature several authors attempt to unravel the women-nature connections. They document how women novelists from different epochs had the ability to uncover the Western world's dichotomous conceptual order-masculinity, femininity; control, obedience; detachment, emotion; border, borderless; rational, irrational-well before the development of Ecofeminism as a school of thought, the term must be untangled....[T]his book is an excellent contribution of Post-structuralist Ecofeminist thought on the contemporary liberatory alternatives debate.-- "Environmental Philosophy" This collection of essays considers feminist e