Download or read book Portuguese Literature and the Environment written by Victor K. Mendes and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portuguese Literature and the Environment explores the relationship between Portuguese literature and the environment from Medieval times to the present. From the centrality of nature in Medieval poetry, through the bucolic verse of the Renaissance, all the way to the Romantic and post-Romantic nostalgia for a pristine natural or rural landscape under threat in the wake of industrialization, Portuguese literature has frequently reflected on the connection between humans and the natural world. More recently, the postcolonial turn in contemporary literature has highlighted the contrast between the environment of the former colonies and that of Portugal. Contributors to the collection examine how Portuguese writers engage with the environment and have incorporated nature in their texts not only to prompt social, political or philosophical reflections on human society, but also as a way to learn from non-humans. The book is organized into three sections. The first explores the relationship between Portuguese philosophy, historiography, culture, and environmental issues. The second section discusses the link between literary texts and the environment from the Renaissance to 1900. The final section analyzes the connection between literary movements or specific authors and environmental change from 1900 to today. Scholars of literature, Latin American studies, literature, and environmental studies will find this volume especially useful.
Download or read book A Revisionary History of Portuguese Literature written by Miguel Tamen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays traces the history of Portuguese literature from the medieval period to the present, providing provocative new interpretations of this previously neglected literary history. The volume serves as a comprehensive introduction to Portuguese literature to students new to the field, and provides new insight into the ongoing controversies on the subject. The Introduction and Afterword explore the relationship between literary history and revisionism.
Download or read book Fictional Environments written by Victoria Saramago and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2022 ASLE Ecocritical Book Award Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America investigates how fictional works have become sites for the production of knowledge, imagination, and intervention in Latin American environments. It investigates the dynamic relationship between fictional images and real places, as the lasting representations of forests, rural areas, and deserts in novels clash with collective perceptions of changes like deforestation and urbanization. From the backlands of Brazil to a developing Rio de Janeiro, and from the rainforests of Venezuela and Peru to the Mexican countryside, rapid deforestation took place in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. How do fictional works and other cultural objects dramatize, resist, and intervene in these ecological transformations? Through analyses of work by João Guimarães Rosa, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Clarice Lispector, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Victoria Saramago shows how novels have inspired conservationist initiatives and offered counterpoints to developmentalist policies, and how environmental concerns have informed the agendas of novelists as essayists, politicians, and public intellectuals. This book seeks to understand the role of literary representation, or mimesis, in shaping, sustaining, and negotiating environmental imaginaries during the deep, ongoing transformations that have taken place from the 1950s to the present.
Download or read book Literature Beyond the Human written by Luca Bacchini and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can Clarice Lispector’s writings help us make sense of the Anthropocene? How does race intersect with the treatment of animals in the works of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis? What can Indigenous philosopher and leader Ailton Krenak teach us about the relationship between environmental degradation and the production of knowledge? Literature Beyond the Human is the first collection of essays in English dedicated to an investigation of Brazilian literature from the viewpoint of the environmental humanities, animal studies, Anthropocene studies, and other critical and theoretical perspectives that question the centrality of the human. This volume includes 15 chapters by leading scholars covering two centuries of Brazilian literary production, from Gonçalves Dias to Astrid Cabral, from Euclides da Cunha to Davi Kopenawa, and others. By underscoring the vast theoretical potential of Brazilian literature and thought, from the influential Modernist thesis of “cultural cannibalism” (antropofagia) to the renewed interest in Amerindian perspectivism in culture. Post-Anthropocentric Brazil shows how the theoretical strength of Brazilian thought can contribute to contemporary debates in the anglophone realm.
Download or read book Jewish Literatures in Spanish and Portuguese written by Ruth Fine and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a thorough introduction to Jewish world literatures in Spanish and Portuguese, which not only addresses the coexistence of cultures, but also the functions of a literary and linguistic space of negotiation in this context. From the Middle Ages to present day, the compendium explores the main Jewish chapters within Spanish- and Portuguese-language world literature, whether from Europe, Latin America, or other parts of the world. No comprehensive survey of this area has been undertaken so far. Yet only a broad focus of this kind can show how diasporic Jewish literatures have been (and are ) – while closely tied to their own traditions – deeply intertwined with local and global literary developments; and how the aesthetic praxis they introduced played a decisive, formative role in the history of literature. With this epistemic claim, the volume aims at steering clear of isolationist approaches to Jewish literatures.
Download or read book Planet Cuba written by Rachel Price and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transformations in Cuban art, literature and culture in the post-Fidel era Cuba has been in a state of massive transformation over the past decade, with its historic resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States only the latest development. While the political leadership has changed direction, other forces have taken hold. The environment is under threat, and the culture feels the strain of new forms of consumption. Planet/Cuba examines how art and literature have responded to a new moment, one both more globalized and less exceptional; more concerned with local quotidian worries than international alliances; more threatened by the depredations of planetary capitalism and climate change than by the vagaries of the nation’s government. Rachel Price examines a fascinating array of artists and writers who are tracing a new socio-cultural map of the island.
Download or read book The Mind of Plants written by John C. Ryan and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that plants have a mind of their own has been a prominent feature of some Indigenous narratives, literary works, and philosophical discourses. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition similarly highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants offers an accessible account of the idea of "the plant mind" by bringing together short essays and poems on plants and their interactions with humans. The texts interpret the theme broadly--from the ways that humans mind and unmind plants to the mindedness or unmindedness of plants themselves. Authors from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences have written about their personal connections to particular plants, reflecting upon their research on plant studies in a style amenable to a broad audience. Each of the authors has selected a plant that functions as a guiding thread to their interpretation of "the mind of plants." From the ubiquitous rose to the ugly hornwort, from the Amazonian ayahuasca to tobacco, the texts reflect the multifarious interactions between humans and flora. These personal narratives, filled with anecdotes, experiences, and musings, offer cutting-edge insights into the different meanings and dimensions of "the mind of plants." Contributors to The Mind of Plants are key figures in the fields of ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, plant behavior and cognition, and critical plant studies. Included are simple, thumbnail-style, black-and-white illustrations of the plants to enhance readers' appreciation of the narratives.
Download or read book Global Literature and the Environment written by Matthew Whittle and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Literature and the Environment analyses literatures from across the world that connect readers to the localized impacts of the climate and ecological emergencies. The book contextualizes ecological breakdown within the history of imperialist-capitalism, exploring how literature helps us to imagine and create a habitable and just world for all forms of life. The four chapters are organised according to the elements of the climate system that are at risk. ‘Earth’ examines Caribbean, American, South African, and British literatures that explore how dominant human groups have exploited soils, minerals, metals, and oil in pursuit of economic aims. ‘Water’ engages with poetic representations of, and responses to, extraction, pollution, and global warming in the fresh- and saltwaters of Nigeria and the icescapes of Alaska. ‘Air’ analyses prose and poetry that depicts atmospheric pollution caused by gas flaring in the Niger Delta and the production of pesticides in India. ‘Life’ attends to the ways in which literature contextualizes the drivers of, and proposed solutions to, mass species extinction across North America, Africa, Australasia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. This accessible and engaging book explores novels, plays and poetry by writers including Octavia Butler, C.L.R. James, dg nanouk okpik, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Imbolo Mbue, Indra Sinha, Witi Ihimaera, J.M. Coetzee, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, amongst many others. It introduces readers to the concept of the Anthropocene alongside perspectives that challenge the assumption that the climate crisis is caused by an undifferentiated humanity. In doing so, the book draws on, and combines, a range of theoretical approaches, including postcolonialism, Indigenous studies, ecocriticism, cultural materialism, and animal studies.
Download or read book Italy and the Ecological Imagination Ecocritical Theories and Practices written by Damiano Benvegnù and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can Italy teach us about our relationships with the nonhuman world in the current socio-environmental crisis? 'Italy and the Ecological Imagination: Ecocritical Theories and Practices' focuses on how Italian writers, activists, visual artists, and philosophers engage with real and fictional environments and how their engagements reflect, critique, and animate the approach that Italian culture has had toward the physical environment and its ecology since late antiquity. Through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the essays collected in this volume explore topics including climate change, environmental justice, animal ethics, and socio-environmental degradation to provide a cogent analysis of how Italian ecological narratives fit within the current transnational debate occurring in the Environmental Humanities. The aim of 'Italy and the Ecological Imagination' is thus to explore non-anthropocentric modes of thinking and interacting with the nonhuman world. The goal is to provide accounts of how Italian historical records have potentially shaped our environmental imagination and how contemporary Italian authors are developing approaches beyond humanism in order to raise questions about the role of humans in a possible (or potentially) post-natural world. Ultimately, the volume will offer a critical map of Italian contributions to our contemporary investigation of the relationships between human and nonhuman habitats and communities.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment written by Louise Westling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative collection of rigorous but accessible essays investigates the exciting new interdisciplinary field of environmental literary criticism.
Download or read book The Portuguese Speaking Diaspora written by Darlene J. Sadlier and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the concept of “globalization,” the Portuguese constructed a vast empire that extended into Africa, India, Brazil, and mid-Atlantic territories, as well as parts of China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Using this empire as its starting point and spanning seven centuries and four continents, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora examines literary and artistic works about the ensuing diaspora, or the dispersion of people within the Portuguese-speaking world, resulting from colonization, the slave trade, adventure seeking, religious conversion, political exile, forced labor, war, economic migration, and tourism. Based on a broad array of written and visual materials, including historiography, letters, memoirs, plays, poetry, fiction, cartographic imagery, paintings, photographs, and films, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is the first detailed analysis of the different and sometimes conflicting cultural productions of the imperial diaspora in its heyday and an important context for understanding the more complex and broader-based culture of population travel and displacement from the former colonies to present-day “homelands.” The topics that Darlene J. Sadlier discusses include exploration and settlement by the Portuguese in different parts of the empire; the Black Atlantic slave trade; nineteenth-century travel and Orientalist imaginings; the colonial wars; and the return of populations to Portugal following African independence. A wide-ranging study of the art and literature of these and other diasporic movements, this book is a major contribution to the growing field of Lusophone studies.
Download or read book Ibero American Ecocriticism written by J. Manuel Gómez and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-02-19 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book disrupts the quintessential assumptions of ecology, the politics of identity, and environmental destruction, while proposing new readings, interpretations, and solutions in the face of urgent environmental issues.
Download or read book Bangkok Wakes to Rain written by Pitchaya Sudbanthad and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. A jazz pianist is summoned in the 1970s to conjure music that will pacify resident spirits, even as he's haunted by ghosts of his former life. Not long after, a young woman gives swimming lessons in the luxury condos that have eclipsed the old house, trying to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in the post-submergence Bangkok of the future, a band of savvy teenagers guides tourists and former residents past waterlogged, ruined landmarks, selling them tissues to wipe their tears for places they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by blood, memory, yearning, chance, and the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibian, ever-morphing city itself"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Strategic Occidentalism written by Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategic Occidentalism examines the transformation, in both aesthetics and infrastructure, of Mexican fiction since the late 1970s. During this time a framework has emerged characterized by the corporatization of publishing, a frictional relationship between Mexican literature and global book markets, and the desire of Mexican writers to break from dominant models of national culture. In the course of this analysis, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado engages with theories of world literature, proposing that “world literature” is a construction produced at various levels, including the national, that must be studied from its material conditions of production in specific sites. In particular, he argues that Mexican writers have engaged in a “strategic Occidentalism” in which their idiosyncratic connections with world literature have responded to dynamics different from those identified by world-systems or diffusionist theorists. Strategic Occidentalism identifies three scenes in which a cosmopolitan aesthetics in Mexican world literature has been produced: Sergio Pitol’s translation of Eastern European and marginal British modernist literature; the emergence of the Crack group as a polemic against the legacies of magical realism; and the challenges of writers like Carmen Boullosa, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Ana García Bergua to the roles traditionally assigned to Latin American writers in world literature.
Download or read book Too Valuable to be Lost written by Álvaro Garrido and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collective book is a multidisciplinary approach on a key-topic for our common future: overfishing. The focus is addressed to the "Atlantic World", considering the main oceanic geography in which this problem born in the early 20th century. The volume offers a wide range of contributions from experts on the topic covering the most relevant areas of the Atlantic and explaining important case studies on overfishing recent history. Written in a historical perspective, the book looks for institutional regulatory solutions based on multilateral solutions and scientific advising. Founders thought on the topic and the understanding’s evolution of the overfishing problem are mainly considered. This book is an accessible synthesis on overfishing history especially recommended for social scientists, historians, biologists, decision-makers and committed citizens.
Download or read book Feminist Ecocriticism written by Douglas A. Vakoch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Sea Commands written by Paulo Mendes and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Azenha do Mar is a fishing community on the southwest coast of Portugal. It came into existence around forty years ago, as an outcome of the abandonment of work in the fields and of propitious ecological conditions. This book looks at the migration processes since the founding of the community and how they relate to the social inequalities for property and labour which prevail today. The book also reflects upon the personal experience of the ethnographer in the field balancing the importance of methodology on the one hand and fieldwork as a research process on the other.
