Final published version, 1.61 MB, PDF document
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Firing the Climate Canon
T2 - A critique of the literary genre of climate change
AU - Burnett, Lucy
PY - 2018/5/12
Y1 - 2018/5/12
N2 - This article makes the case for more climate change, where climate change refers to the prevailing ideologies and frameworks that inform our understanding of environmental change in the first place. It reviews the mainstream literature in popular science writing, fiction and poetry from the point of view of a political frame analysis of climate change, to demonstrate how a certain understanding of climate change maps onto conventions of literary genre. This understanding, and associated literature, is critiqued on the basis of their continued attachment to dualistic and teleological narratives of human mastery and progress, such as to make the case for a literature which offers something radically other. The current political context, not least Donald Trump’s victory and Brexit, is cited as evidence of the contemporary importance of alternatives to the establishment approach to climate mitigation than either denial or scepticism—in both literature, and more broadly.
AB - This article makes the case for more climate change, where climate change refers to the prevailing ideologies and frameworks that inform our understanding of environmental change in the first place. It reviews the mainstream literature in popular science writing, fiction and poetry from the point of view of a political frame analysis of climate change, to demonstrate how a certain understanding of climate change maps onto conventions of literary genre. This understanding, and associated literature, is critiqued on the basis of their continued attachment to dualistic and teleological narratives of human mastery and progress, such as to make the case for a literature which offers something radically other. The current political context, not least Donald Trump’s victory and Brexit, is cited as evidence of the contemporary importance of alternatives to the establishment approach to climate mitigation than either denial or scepticism—in both literature, and more broadly.
KW - climate change
KW - literature
KW - genre
KW - ecopoetics
KW - environment
KW - frame analysis
U2 - 10.1080/14688417.2018.1472027
DO - 10.1080/14688417.2018.1472027
M3 - Journal article
VL - 22
SP - 161
EP - 180
JO - Green Letters
JF - Green Letters
SN - 1468-8417
IS - 2
ER -