The Anthropocene and Literature (Cambridge Critical Concepts) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009537776 ISBN 13: 9781009537773

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

In recent decades, the Anthropocene has become a powerful concept for understanding climate change, extinction, and planetary crisis, and literature is one of its most vital arenas of reflection and imagination. Drawing together the work of both emerging and leading scholars from across the globe, this volume explores how stories, genres, and critical debates illuminate humanity's profound impact on Earth. From Romantic precursors to contemporary climate fiction, from deep time to speculative futures, this volume traces how literature and literary studies grapple with questions of scale, ethics, and entanglement across global contexts. Combining historical depth with current theory, the book offers fresh insights into topics such as infrastructure, animal studies, colonialism, and extractivism, while engaging urgent questions: How have literature and literary studies anticipated and responded to humanity's fraught relation with the planet? Can literature change our behavior and help us imagine new, more sustainable ways of living?

About this title

About the Author

Tore Rye Andersen is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University. He has published numerous essays on literary fiction in journals such as Critique, Narrative, Poetics Today, Textual Practice, and American Literary History. His most recent book is Planetary Pynchon: History, Modernity, and the Anthropocene (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009537776
• ISBN 13: 9781009537773
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Andersen Tore Rye