Synopsis
This open access book argues that storytelling is an important resource in coming to terms with the loss of the feeling of living a grounded existence where the future remains relatively stable and predictable. Faced with the specter of climate catastrophe, we lose confidence in the future—a well-documented response in the environmental movement, for example. Yet stories, and in particular sophisticated fictional stories, can help us negotiate that uncertainty: they offer affective and imaginative tools that channel the instability of our climate future and invite audiences to accept its fundamental uncertainty. In all, this book represents a serious contribution to the environmental humanities that brings a flexible formal approach to bear on central questions of our time. Its commentary on contemporary works of prose and digital narrative is an aid for navigating climate uncertainty and appreciating the more-than-human scale—but also the tragic ramifications—of the ecological crisis. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The European Research Council and the University of Ghent.
About the Authors
Marco Caracciolo is Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University, Belgium. Drawing inspiration from cognitive science, the philosophy of mind, and the environmental humanities, his work explores the forms of experience afforded by narrative in literary fiction and other media (especially video games). Between 2017 and 2022 he led the ERC-funded NARMESH project at Ghent University, which focused on negotiations of the nonhuman in contemporary narrative. He is the author of several books, including most recently Contemporary Narrative and the Spectrum of Materiality (2023) and On Soulsring Worlds: Narrative Complexity, Digital Communities, and Interpretation in Dark Souls and Elden Ring (2024). He received the Barbara and George Perkins Prize of the International Society for the Study of Narrative for his 2022 book Slow Narrative and Nonhuman Materialities. Marco's game scholarship has appeared in Games and Culture, Game Studies, and Eludamos.
Richard Kerridge is a nature writer and ecocritic who leads the MA in Creative Writing and co-ordinates research and postgraduate studies in English Literature and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, UK. His works include: Cold Blood: Adventures with Reptiles and Amphibians (2014), J. H. Prynne's place-based poem-sequence The Oval Window, in collaboration with the late N. H. Reeve (2018), Writing the Enviornment (1998) and his other nature writing has been broadcast and published in BBC Wildlife, Poetry Review and Granta. He was awarded the 2012 Roger Deakin Prize by the Society of Authors, and has twice received the BBC Wildlife Award for Nature Writing. He was founding Chair of ASLE-UKI and has been an elected member of the ASLE Executive Council. With Greg Garrard he is co-editor of the Bloomsbury Academic series 'Environmental Cultures' – the first series of monographs in the Environmental Humanities to be published in Britain and he is a member of the steering committee of New Networks for Nature.
Greg Garrard is Associate Professor of Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of the bestselling book Ecocriticism (2nd edition, 2011) and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism (2014).
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