1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910484747203321

Autore

Reno Seth T

Titolo

Early Anthropocene Literature in Britain, 1750-1884 / / by Seth T. Reno

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

9783030532468

3030532461

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (258 pages)

Collana

Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment, , 2946-3165

Disciplina

820.9005

800

Soggetti

Literature - History and criticism

Literature - Philosophy

Literature, Modern - 18th century

Literature, Modern - 19th century

History

Literary History

Literary Theory

Eighteenth-Century Literature

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. The Cradle of the Anthropocene -- 2. Volcanoes and Industrialization in Early Anthropocene Literature -- 3. Rivers, Canals, and Commerce in the Early Anthropocene -- 4. Clouds and Climate Change in the Nineteenth Century -- Epilogue: Modernism and the Anthropocene.

Sommario/riassunto

This book questions when exactly the Anthropocene began, uncovering an "early Anthropocene" in the literature, art, and science of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. In chapters organized around the classical elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, Seth Reno shows how literary writers of the Industrial Era borrowed from scientists to capture the changes they witnessed to weather, climate, and other systems. Poets linked the hellish flames of industrial



furnaces to the magnificent, geophysical force of volcanic explosions. Novelists and painters depicted cloud formations and polluted urban atmospheres as part of the emerging discipline of climate science. In so doing, the subjects of Reno's study-some famous, some more obscure-gave form to a growing sense of humans as geophysical agents, capable of reshaping Earth itself. Situated at the interaction of literary studies, environmental studies, and science studies, Early Anthropocene Literature inBritain tells the story of how writers heralded, and wrestled with, Britain's role in sparking the now-familiar "epoch of humans.".