This module exercises your close reading skills by focussing on the analysis of a range of poems, as well as prose. These texts have been selected for their use of powerful and complex imagery. The aim is to develop your analytical and close reading skills – making sense of metaphors, symbols and intertextual allusions. At the same time, the module introduces pivotal literary and cultural movements: The Enlightenment, Romanticism, Ecopoetry, and Afrofuturism.
The texts are selected for their ecopoetic themes, focussing on how literature represents the natural world and our relationship with it. We explore literature that puts Nature (with a capital N) at the forefront and gives her agency and voice. We trace parallels between European Romanticism and Indigenous knowledge systems, particularly their shared sense of nature as a wise teacher.
We are all too aware that we are now living in the Anthropocene: the first time in world history where a single species (anthropos/ the human) has irreversabily and catastrophically altered the climate and geology of the planet, leading to "mass extinctions and onrushing natural disasters" (Donna Haraway). We thus turn to poetry and novels that question the role of humans in the devastation of the Earth. And, more importantly, show us how to rekindle our relationship with her.
You will become an ecocritic in this module and learn to read with Green-focals. The eco in ecocriticism refers to ecology, which is concerned with the reciprocal relationship between all species in an environment. Ecology does not see the human as separate to, or above, nature but entangled in a system of mutual dependency. How we treat nature has everything to do with the stories we are told about her. How writers and poets describe Nature and our relationship with her matters. What stories shape our relationship with Nature? Are they stories of dominion over nature, or other stories that speak of kinship with Nature, marveling at her powers?
