Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth

Bénédicte Meillon

doi:10.5771/9781666910438

Summary

Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth tackles the reenchantment process at work in a part of contemporary ecoliterature that is marked by the resurfacing of the song of the earth topos and of Gaia images. Focusing on the postmodernist braiding of various indigenous and ecofeminist ontologies, close readings of the animistic and totemic dimensions of the stories at hand lead to the theorizing of liminal realism—a mode that shares much with magical realism but that is approached through an ecopoetic lens, specifically working an interspecies kind of magic, situating readers in-between human and other-than-human worlds. This book promotes a worldview based on relationships of reciprocity and symbiosis. It restores our capacity for wonder together with our sensitive intelligence. Liminal realism adopts a stance in-between scientific, mythical, and poetic worldviews as it calls attention to the soundscapes, odorscapes, feelscapes, and landscapes of the world. This monograph offers an original transdisciplinary and cross-Atlantic take on ecopoetics as it straddles the two academic worlds and sparks a conversation between artworks, theories, and studies emerging from the English-speaking world as well as from Francophone contexts.

Entangling the materiality of language back within the flesh of the world, this book and the texts under study provide insight into the fundamentally sympoietic dimension of ecopoiesis.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2022
Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-1042-1
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-1043-8
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 376
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgements No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 18
1. Disenchanted, Enchanted, and Reenchanted Worldviews No access
2. Toward an Ecofeminist Project of a Rational Reenchantment No access
3. An Ecofeminist Remystification of Narrative No access
4. Sowing the Seeds of an Ecopoet(h)ics of Wonder and Enchantment No access
1. Why Liminal, Rather than “Magical,” “Spiritual,” “Mystical,” “Ontological,” or “Epistemological” Re No access
2. Postcolonial Liminality and (Re)initiation into a Multispecies World No access
3. Post-Pastoral Thought-Experiments with Totemic and Animistic Liminality No access
4. Liminal Realism and Interspecies Thought-Experiments in Contemporary Fiction No access
1. Ecopoets and the Art of Anamorphosis No access
2. Postmodern Shamanism No access
3. Reweaving Word to World No access
4. Restor(y)ing and Rewor(l)ding No access
5. Translating the Song of the Earth No access
6. Conclusion No access
Bibliography No access Pages 341 - 358
Index No access Pages 359 - 374
About the Author No access Pages 375 - 376