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Narrating the Mesh - (Under the Sign of Nature) by Marco Caracciolo (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- A hierarchical model of human societies' relations with the natural world is at the root of today's climate crisis; Narrating the Mesh contends that narrative form is instrumental in countering this ideology.
- About the Author: Marco Caracciolo is Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University (Belgium) and author of four books, most recently Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth-Century Fiction.
- 240 Pages
- Literary Criticism, Subjects & Themes
- Series Name: Under the Sign of Nature
Description
About the Book
"This book argues that humans have a natural, biologically driven preference for organic form in syntax and text"--Book Synopsis
A hierarchical model of human societies' relations with the natural world is at the root of today's climate crisis; Narrating the Mesh contends that narrative form is instrumental in countering this ideology. Drawing inspiration from Timothy Morton's concept of the "mesh" as a metaphor for the human-nonhuman relationship in the face of climate change, Marco Caracciolo investigates how narratives in genres such as the novel and the short story employ formal devices to effectively channel the entanglement of human communities and nonhuman phenomena.
How can narrative undermine linearity in order to reject notions of unlimited technological progress and economic growth? What does it mean to say that nonhuman materials and processes--from contaminated landscapes to natural evolution--can become characters in stories? And, conversely, how can narrative trace the rising awareness of climate change in the thick of human characters' mental activities? These are some of the questions Narrating the Mesh addresses by engaging with contemporary works by Ted Chiang, Emily St. John Mandel, Richard Powers, Jeff VanderMeer, Jeanette Winterson, and many others. Entering interdisciplinary debates on narrative and the Anthropocene, this book explores how stories can bridge the gap between scientific models of the climate and the human-scale world of everyday experience, powerfully illustrating the complexity of the ecological crisis at multiple levels.
Review Quotes
Accessibly and engagingly written, Narrating the Mesh offers a great depth of scholarshipin narratology, ecocriticism, and the emerging field of econarratology
--Astrid Bracke, HAN University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), author of Climate Crisis in the 21st-Century British NovelBoth refreshingly buoyant in its optimism and resolutely useful in its task, Narrating the Mesh offers its reader original returns to key ideas and a veritable toolbox with which to build and sophisticate future projects.
-- "DIEGESIS"Marco Caracciolo's tour-de-force Narrating the Mesh: Form and Story in the Anthropocene eschews the empathy discourse informing neoliberal discussions about Anthropocenic climate crisis (Elvia Wilk) in favor of form. By demonstrating the tractability of affective patterning through human-nonhuman enmeshment in exquisite close readings of a diversity of speculative fiction, this deeply researched and meticulously argued book generously contributes to the ongoing project of rendering reality open to creative transformation
-- "Ecozon@"About the Author
Marco Caracciolo is Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University (Belgium) and author of four books, most recently Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth-Century Fiction.