A History of Irish Literature and the Environment

Description

From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment.

Malcolm Sen teaches in the Department of English at UMass Amherst. He is the author of Unnatural Disasters: Irish Literature, Climate Change and Sovereignty (2022). His research interests include the environmental humanities and postcolonial studies; he is especially interested in changing conceptions of sovereignty in the twenty-first century. Sen has published numerous articles and book chapters in these areas.