The concept of sublime metamorphosis, considered here through affects ascribed to fictional characters, radically revises the aesthetic of the Romantic sublime, and the aspects of this literary perspective that have evolved into the postmodern sublime. Sublime metamorphosis is activated when protagonists pause …
At many points in Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë questions the inequity between humans and other animals, both by linking physical cruelty to other forms of oppression, and by depicting such oppressions as unacceptable, be they enacted against humans or nonhumans. In …
This essay is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen my material affinity with snakes. By working through my all-too-human physical engagement with these creatures, turning to literature to re-imagine the ways that I see the snakes in my life, I aim…
A readerly aesthetic of ecological consciousness, outlined in recent ecocritical scholarship, has led me to connect a number of Emily Brontë’s poems (from an oeuvre created between 1835 and 1848) to the swooping turns in Alexis Wright’s third and latest novel The …
If it is accepted that pro-environmental actions are related to positive perceptions of the external environment, then it can be argued that literature has the potential to shift readers’ preparedness to act for constructive ecological change. Texts that discern communications from nonhuman …
A heartfelt part of my effort to live better in the world is to seek new ways to understand how I can sensibly go beyond my own skin. Here I build on this audacious desire, thinking through perceptions and significations specific to …
Always I liked Spiros Metropolis, but Mana hated him for all his life. You know why? Because his family were on the other side of politics to us. You think that doesn’t matter? It did. It was all about politics then. Mana …
My devotion to the bovine is part of an ongoing internal ethical debate, which leads with different pulls from my mind and my body. It is a debate informed by my past, my writing practice and my ecocritical engagement. To get to …
