Cirrus@Austlit

'Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell’s book of ecocritical scholarship examines six contemporary narrative-prose texts from Australia and breaks new ground, both in relation to ecocriticism and to the study of Australian literature. She proposes the cosmological as an old-new reading lens in an age of climate crises – as opposed to the use of ‘ecological’ or ‘Anthropocene’ – arguing it offers a better framework for considering a broader interconnectedness of ecosystems in literary texts, as well as human and more-than-human inter-relations and collectivities in narratives. Where most ecocritical scholarship concentrates on stories set in a vulnerable future, Bartha-Mitchell’s book disrupts this temporal straight-jacketing by examining texts that – roughly arranged – examine ecological pasts, futures and presents. Cosmological Readings thus introduces readers to new ecocritical stories, to a wider range of primary texts, and challenges limited thinking about where new imaginings on the environment, ecology and climate change might be found.' (Introduction)