New Materialist Literary Theory: Critical Conceptions of Literature for the Anthropocene(New Critical Humanities)

This edited collection builds on recent strands in philosophy that promote a critical conceptual return to the material world outside human culture. Through the lens of literary analysis and theory, it conceptualizes the potential of New Materialism as a timely mode of critique toward the current human condition and its effect on literature and the present. Organized around the key New Materialist concepts of entanglement and speculation, the chapters by renowned literary scholars and theorists approach literary texts and theory from onto-epistemological and speculative realist perspectives. Both concepts critically bespeak our precarious relation to matter during the Anthropocene. Entanglement analyzes this human inference with the material environment and its consequences, while speculation makes palpable our cognitive limits in grasping these consequences and our continued obligation to try to do so. Literature emerges as a site where entanglement and speculation, as well as their alignment, are intensively presented and negotiated. In highlighting these connections, the chapters in this collection bring entanglement and speculation (theory) together to form a critical literary theory fit for the Anthropocene.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Diffracting “stabilized/stabilizing binaries” of Contemporary British Climate-Change Theater Chapter 2: Pastoral Fieldwork: Wordsworth’s Labour Chapter 3: At First Blush: New Materialism and Computational Literary Studies Chapter 4: Quicksand, Lispector, and the Volatile Matters of Literary Materialism Chapter 5: Being a/part. Thinking About the Human/Nonhuman Relationship Chapter 6: Resisting Finitude, or The Romantic Anthropocene Chapter 7: At War with the Seasons: Wilfred Owen’s “Exposure” and “Spring Offensive” Chapter 8: W.G. Sebald and the Exploded View Part Three: Aligning Entanglement and Speculation Chapter 9: Uncertain Materiality in the Neuronovel Chapter 10: Diffracting Birds and Words in Nicholas Royle’s An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017) Chapter 11: How To Get Outside—Assemblages in Speculative Nature Writing

About the Author :
Kerstin Howaldt holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Erfurt. Kai Merten is professor of British literary studies at the University of Erfurt. He is the founder of the Erfurt Network on New Materialism (ENNM).

Review :
Over the last decade or so, New Materialist philosophies have swept across the humanities and social sciences. Even so, the methodological implications for literary studies remain an open question. In this vivid edited collection, Kerstin Howaldt and Kai Merten present an array of original stabs at that question, summarizing and elaborating on existing insights, while pointing new ways forward.