Modernist Ecology: Modernism and the Reimagination of Nature

Countering the trend in contemporary ecocriticism to advance realism as an environmentally responsible mode of representation, this essay argues that the anti-realist aesthetics of literary modernism were implicitly “ecological.” In order to make this argument I distinguish between contemporary and modernist ecological culture (both of which I differentiate in turn from ecological science); while the former is concerned primarily with the practical reform characteristic of what we now call “environmentalism,” the latter demanded an all-encompassing reimagination of the relationship between humanity and nature. “Modernist ecology,” as I call it, attempted to envision this change, which would be ontological or metaphysical rather than simply social, through thematically and formally experimental works of art. Its radical vision, suggestive in some ways of today’s “deep” ecology, repudiated modern accounts of nature as a congeries of inert objects to be manipulated by a sovereign subject, and instead foregrounded the chiasmic intertexture of the subject/object relationship. In aesthetic modernism we encounter not “objective” nature, but “nature-being” – a blank substratum beneath the solid contours of what philosopher Kate Soper calls “lay nature” – the revelation of which shatters historical constructions of nature and alone allows for radical alternatives. This essay looks specifically at modernist ecology as it appears in the works of W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Samuel Beckett, detailing their attempts to envision revolutionary new ecologies, but also their struggles with the limited capacity of esoteric modernist art to effect significant ecological change on a collective level.

Morris as work-master : a lecture delivered by W.R. Lethaby at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art on the 26th of October, 1901.

With: "The study and practice of artistic crafts" / by W.R. Lethaby.

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Editors: 1890-95, E. J. James; 1896-1900, R. P. Falkner; Jan. 1901-Mar. 1902, H. R. Seager; May 1902-Sept. 1914, E. R. Johnson; Nov. 1914-July 1929, C. L/ King; Sept. 1929- T. Sellin.

Studiën over de metriek van het alliteratievers.

Oudnoorsche metriek.--Angelsaksische en Duitsche metriek.--Oorsprong en ontwikkeling van het alliteratievers.

Introduction to agricultural biochemistry

Includes bibliographies.

Geology and ground-water hydrology of the Heart River irrigation project and the Dickinson area,

Mode of access: Internet.

Die Fahrt der Deutschland,

Mode of access: Internet.

Zwischen Lindau und Memel während des Krieges,

Mode of access: Internet.

The Flint Fire Department : past and present /

Cover title: Fire department : city of Flint, 1916.

Histoire des persécutions pendant les deux premiers siècles,

Mode of access: Internet.

Les persécutions et la critique moderne ...

Bibliographical foot-notes.

Le christianisme et l'empire romain, de Néron ̀a Théodose,

"Choix de textes relatifs aux rapports des empereurs avec les chrétiens jusqu'au règne de Constantin": p. [289]-311.

Die sächsischen unruhen der jahre 1830-1831 und Sachsens übergang zum verfassungsstaat,

Mode of access: Internet.