Lexington Books Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth (Ecocritical Theory and Practice)

Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth tackles the reenchantment process at work in a part of contemporary ecoliterature that is marked by the resurfacing of the song of the earth topos and of Gaia images. Focusing on the postmodernist braiding of various, indigenous, and ecofeminist ontologies, close readings of the animistic and totemic dimensions of the stories at hand lead to the theorizing of liminal realism―a mode that shares much with magical realism but that is approached through an ecopoetic lens, specifically working an interspecies kind of magic, situating readers in-between human and other-than-human worlds. This book promotes a worldview based on relationships of reciprocity and symbiosis. It restores our capacity for wonder together with our sensitive intelligence. Liminal realism adopts a stance in-between scientific, mythical, and poetic worldviews as it calls attention to the soundscapes, odorscapes, feelscapes, and landscapes of the world. This monograph offers an original, transdisciplinary, and cross-Atlantic take on ecopoetics as it straddles the two academic worlds and sparks a conversation between artworks, theories, and studies emerging from the English-speaking world as well as from Francophone contexts.