Dark Nature

Focusing on the concept of "dark ecology" and its invitation to add an anti-pastoral perspective to ecocriticism, this collection of essays on American literature and culture offers examples of how a vision of nature's darker side can create a fuller understanding of humanity's relation to nature.

Focusing on the concept of “dark ecology” and its invitation to add an anti-pastoral perspective to ecocriticism, this collection of essays on American literature and culture offers examples of how a vision of nature’s darker side can create a fuller understanding of humanity’s relation to nature.

Table of ContentsRichard J. Schneider, ¿Introduction¿Dark Nature and the American Canon1.Gina Claywell, ¿¿Famine is a Frightful Monster¿: Constructing Nature in Colonial Road Trips by Sarah Kemble Knight and William Byrd II¿2.Elizabeth Kubek, ¿`Passage into New Forms¿: The Negative Ecologies of Charles Brockden Brown¿3.Mark Henderson, ¿Dutchmen on the Brink: The Ghost Ship as Avatar of Dark (American) Nature in Poe¿s `MS. Found in a Bottle.¿¿4.Jesse Curran, ¿Thoreaüs Week and the Work of the Eco-lament¿5.Frederico Bellini, ¿The Gnostic Dark Side of Nature in Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy: Carrying the Fire out of Arcadiä6.Jennifer Schell, ¿Fiendish Fumaroles and Malevolent Mud Pots: The EcoGothic Aspects of Owen Wister¿s Yellowstone Stories¿7.Monika M. Elbert, ¿Frontiersmen, Robber Barons, Architects, and the Darkening Aesthetics of Nature in Willa Cather¿s A Lost Lady¿Dark Nature and New Voices8.Richard J. Schneider, ¿The Dark Side of Two Nature Writing Genres: Nature Noir and Wisconsin Death Trip¿9. Sarah Daw, ¿The `dark ecology¿ of the Bomb: Writing the Nuclear as a part of`Nature¿ in Cold War American Literature¿10. T. Mera Moore Lafferty, ¿The Poetry of Adele Ne Jame: Dark Nature, Cosmic Justice, and the Communion of Paradoxology¿11. Rachel Paparone, ¿Anti-pastoral Imagery and the Search for Cajun Identity¿12. Dana Prodoehl, ¿(Dark) Nature and Masculinity: The Anti-Pastoralism of Benjamin Percy¿s The Wilding¿13. Matthew Masucci, ¿Hyperobjects, Plant Entelechy, and the Horror of Eco-Colonization in Jeff VanderMeer¿s Southern Reach Trilogy¿14. Isabel Galleymore, ¿¿what¿s the world but shine//and seem¿: `Radical Kitsch¿ and Mark Doty¿s Environmental Poetics¿Dark Nature and the Media15. Anette Vandsoe, ¿Listening to the Dark Side of Nature¿16. Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann, ¿Eco-Horror Cinematic Techniques in Television Nature Documentaries: Monsters Inside Me and the Dark Side of Nature¿17. David LaRocca, ¿Hunger in the Heart of Nature: Werner Herzog¿s Anti-Sentimental Dispatches from the American Wilderness (Reflections on Grizzly Man)¿