1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910838328003321

Autore

Swarbrick Steven

Titolo

The environmental unconscious : ecological poetics from Spenser to Milton / / Steven Swarbrick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, Minnesota : , : University of Minnesota Press, , 2023

©2023

ISBN

9781452968834 (electronic book)

9781517913816

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (336 pages.) : illustrations

Soggetti

Psychoanalysis and literature

Ecocriticism

Ecopoetry

Loss (Psychology) in literature

Materialism in literature

English poetry - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Literary criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

Why has psychoanalysis long been kept at the margins of environmental criticism despite the many theories of eco-Marxism, queer ecology, and eco-deconstruction available today? What is unique, possibly even traumatic, about eco-psychoanalysis? The Environmental Unconscious addresses these questions as it provides an innovative and theoretical account of environmental loss focused on the counterintuitive forms of enjoyment that early modern poetry and psychoanalysis jointly theorize. Steven Swarbrick urges literary critics and environmental scholars fluent in the new materialism to rethink notions of entanglement, animacy, and consciousness raising. He introduces concepts from psychoanalysis as keys to understanding the force of early modern ecopoetics. Through close readings of Edmund Spenser, Walter Ralegh, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton, he reveals a



world of matter that is not merely hyperconnected, as in the new materialism, but porous and off-kilter. And yet the loss these poets reveal is central to the enjoyment their works offer—and that nature offers. As insightful as it is engaging, The Environmental Unconscious offers a provocative challenge to ecocriticism that, under the current regime of fossil capitalism in which everything solid interconnects, a new theory of disconnection is desperately needed. Tracing the propulsive force of the environmental unconscious from the early modern period to Freudian and post-Freudian theories of desire, Swarbrick not only puts nature on the couch in this book but also renews the psychoanalytic toolkit in light of environmental collapse.--