An Ecopoetics of Agency - (Environmental Cultures) by Sarah Bouttier (Hardcover)

About the Book

Establishing the existence of a category of poems from the Modernist and contemporary periods which give agency to nonhuman beings and texts themselves, this book puts form, often neglected within ecocriticism, at the centre of its definition of ecopoetics.

Book Synopsis

Focusing on a category of poems from the Modernist and contemporary periods which give agency to nonhuman beings and texts themselves, Sarah Bouttier puts form, often neglected within ecocriticism, at the center of the definition of ecopoetics.

Grounding ecopoetics in posthumanist ontologies (new materialism, flat ontology and Latour's work on agency), Bouttier explores how the poems collapse the human/nonhuman divide and re-instil wonder at the nonhuman world.

By juxtaposing readings of Modernist poets such as D. H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore with contemporary poets such as Les Murray, Pattiann Rogers, Alice Oswald and Kathleen Jamie, the book provides fresh insight into well-known works and offers a new perspective on contemporary ecopoetry.

Review Quotes

"Through meticulous and sophisticated close readings, Sarah Bouttier's book demonstrates how poetry extends agency across human and nonhuman entities. Theorizing poems themselves as nonhuman creaturely agents, it makes a compelling case for poetry's crucial relevance for ecological thought." --Pieter Vermeulen, Professor of American and Comparative Literature, KU Leuven, Belgium

About the Author

Sarah Bouttier is an Assistant Professor of English at École polytechnique, France and a member of PRISMES (Sorbonne Nouvelle, France). Her research interests include literature and the environment, art and science, posthumanism, ecofeminism, poetry and speculative fiction.