Hobbits, ents, and dæmons : ecocritical thought embodied in the fantastic

This paper investigates the occurrence of ecocritical thought in two canonical fantasy epics, The Lord of The Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien and His Dark Materials (1995–2000) by Philip Pullman. Using current ecocritical theory as well as writers and critics of speculative fiction to study the primary works from a marginalized angle, this paper argues that fantasy fiction, more than other literary genres, has an intrinsic exploratory potential for ecocritical ideas because the strong immersive aspect of the genre entices the reader to open up for a less anthropocentric view of the world. If this is investigated further, the narrow space for fantasy literature in literary criticism and academia may be broadened to include a more politically engaged discussion of fantasy than typically assumed

‘Age of Lovecraft’?— Anthropocene Monsters in (New) Weird Narrative

This paper considers whether the twenty-first-century resurgence of H. P. Lovecraft and weird fiction can be read as a conceptual parallel to the Anthropocene epoch, taking Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock’s The Age of Lovecraftas a starting-point. The assumption is that the two ‘ages’ are historically and thematically linked through the ‘monsters’ that inhabit them; monsters that include—but are not limited to—extensions, reproductions, and evolutions of Lovecraft’swritings. Preoccupied with environmental issues such as global climate change, the twenty-first-century imaginary has conjured monsters that appear to have much in common with early twentieth-century cosmic horror stories. Considering the renewed interest in Lovecraft and the weird, such developments raise the question: what can (weird) monsters tell us about the Anthropocene moment? This paper maps the ‘monstrous’ in the discourses emerging from the Anthropocene epoch and ‘The Age of Lovecraft’ by considering (new) weird narratives fromcontemporary literature, graphic novels, film, TV, and video games. Mindful of on-going discussions within ecocriticism, philosophy, and critical theory, the paper discusses a handful of unconventional texts to investigate the potential of the weird for expressing Anthropocene anxieties and for approaching nonhuman realities from new angles

Zooming through Covid : fostering safe communities of critical reflection via online writers’ group interaction

Writers’ groups, in virtual or physical forms, can create communities of practice, which have been shown to offer emotional support to writers during vulnerable times. Noticing that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated emotional vulnerability in our undergraduates who were writing 10,000-word reports, we initiated an online writers’ group using the Zoom electronic platform. A focus group held at the closing of the semester revealed that students valued most the feelings of safety nurtured by the group. An examination of the interaction in the sessions, via video recordings, revealed that it was precisely this safety that stimulated critical reflection among participants, which helped them manage their writing processes

Weird fiction in a warming world : a reading strategy for the Anthropocene

My dissertation explores the ways in which weird fiction generates a reading strategy to examine the Anthropocene and its global environmental crises. Drawing on and contributing to the fields of weird scholarship, narrative theory, and ecocriticism, I discuss contemporary Anglophone weird fiction with ecological themes to argue that the weird is a critical lens through which reactions to and ethics concerning human-induced ecological disasters may be better understood. Contemporary weird fiction increasingly broaches topics such as ecology, global warming, petroculture, and pollution, and I therefore discuss how authors like Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, and Reza Negarestani use the weird mode in innovative ways not only to challenge the biopolitical status quo, but also to reinvent weird tropes and techniques. Conversely, Anthropocene topics like the ones mentioned above are increasingly referred to by critics, journalists, artists, and environmentalists in ways that recall weird imagery and tropes. I therefore argue that there are significant historical, thematic, and political links between the weird and the warming world, which I uncover and critique by viewing the weird as a reading strategy

'Just a surface' : anamorphic perspective and nonhuman narration in Jeff VanderMeer’s The Strange Bird

This chapter close-reads The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer (The Strange Bird: A Borne Story. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017) in light of ongoing discussions in ecocriticism, posthumanism, and narrative theory. I argue that the novella takes the point of view of the nonhuman without rendering the plot genre-formulaic and depoliticised on the one hand, and without succumbing to pure allegory on the other. Based on the assumption that weird narratives demonstrate an affinity for expressing ecological anxieties via nonhuman characters by challenging tensions between hierarchical binaries such as subject and object, self and other, I argue that The Strange Bird uses affordances of the weird mode to trouble (under)current notions of subjectivity and agency, specifically by experimenting with nonhuman narration, affect, and a form of narrativised anamorphic projection

Heights they should never have scaled : our (weird) planet

In this article, I scrutinize the much-discussed “walrus scene” from Netflix’s nature documentary Our Planet (2019) for its formal and thematic similarities to weird fiction. I argue that these similarities reveal tensions in how we conceptualize the environment, the human, and the nonhuman. By comparing the narrative strategies in the walrus scene to similar strategies in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (2014), I problematize the emergent crosstalk between the weird and the Anthropocene, and the ways in which it mediates the environmental crisis, via concepts such as “Anthropocene horror,” “world-without-us,” and “global weirding.