Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Humanities — Language & Literature — Environmental Studies

With this volume, Rigby (environmental humanities, Monash Univ., Australia) brings interdisciplinary and contemporary urgency to her earlier books in the "Under the Sign of Nature" series.  Topographies of the Sacred (2004) andEcocritical Theory  (CH, Mar'12, 49-3689), the latter coedited with Axel Goodbody, introduce the practice of interpreting the environment in literary texts; here, Rigby advocates for alternative ways of speaking about climate change.  If not returning to a sense of the sacred, individuals should at least take responsibility for the profane in this Anthropocene era.  Inspired by the devastating firestorms in Australia in 2003, Rigby examines ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary explanations for what were once natural evils but are now secularized and rationalized as natural disasters.  She discusses the subject in chapters devoted to earthquakes, pestilence, floods, fires, and windstorms.  Rigby's expertise in British, German, and Australian aboriginal literature results in excellent ecocritical interpretations of Mary ShelleysThe Last Man (1826), Theodor StormsThe Dykemaster(German, 1888), and Alexis WrightsCarpentaria (2006).  In addition, Rigby sheds "eco-light" on the works of Aristotle, T. S. Eliot, Francis Bacon, Boccaccio, the Brothers Grimm, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Heinrich von Kleist, and others and on the Bible.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.